Weather Eye: Showers today, then skies should clear for nice weekend

It felt almost springlike outside Wednesday with highs around the county in the 55- to 60-degree range. Although we have showers today, skies will clear tonight, and we will enjoy a few dry days and a second nice weekend in a row. Wow. With all the moisture we could see fog in some areas and even some scattered frost in fog-free clear locations.

The 56-degree high Wednesday was 9 degrees above the normal high of 47 degrees. The record was 61 degrees, do you remember when? Easy, last year in 2021 during a pineapple express event with 1.89 inches of rain.

Our average low is 34 degrees, which we will be closer to this weekend. The record low for Wednesday was minus 8 degrees set in 1909. It can get cold. In all my years of observing weather here in Clark County the coldest I have seen was minus 2 degrees in early January 1980 at my home in Hazel Dell.

We aren’t the only place it was “warm” with temperatures in the far north at Prince George, Dawson Creek and Whitehorse which “enjoyed” temperatures in the 40s and 50s and even some rain earlier this week. They are slowly cooling off once again.

I certainly do not see any cold snaps heading our way, so I will surmise that the rest of the month could be warmer and drier than average. We could sure use the drier part. Vancouver’s monthly total rainfall as of 4 p.m. Wednesday was 3.98 compared to the average of 2.04 inches.

The Washington Coast was deluged once again with 3 inches of rain in a 36-hour period from midnight Tuesday to noon Wednesday. They got clipped by yet another pineapple express which was primarily focused on northwestern Washington and British Columbia. Those areas certainly did not need that episode. At least we have a few dry days for rivers and the lowlands to recover.

If you have been lazy like me, we have another opportunity to work outside in the yard a bit this weekend. One reader reported Wednesday that he observed a woolly bear scrambling across his driveway at the 1,000-foot elevation on Mount Pleasant in western Skamania County.