We’ve had blustery weather, to say the least. Add in plenty of gray skies and rotating bands of moisture, and we have the ingredients for a typical January day.
There isn’t much change from our previous chat on Tuesday. An area of deep low pressure is well offshore to our southwest, and the main jet stream remains flowing into California.
Too much rain is falling in California, in fact, with widespread flooding and mudslides. I see reports of reservoirs filling quickly, which is good news, but folks in Southern California are not used to such downpours.
As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, we had .15 of an inch in the rain gauge in Vancouver for the first four days of January. That is on the light side.
On this date last year in my column, I was asking if you were getting tired of the rain. At 5 p.m. Jan. 4, 2022, we had over 2 inches of rain; some of our foothill observers reported over 5 inches.
A large area of low pressure was spinning around last year, but unlike this year, it was centered in the Gulf of Alaska, where it should be — not off the California coast.
Any chance of cold weather and lowland snow? No signs of those things yet. Even our longer-range forecast models foresee no cold wave, which is highly unusual for January.
Usually, we weather geeks are what we call “model riding,” searching for signs of potential cold and snowy weather, which are usually on the long-range models’ radar in January. Those models dangle a carrot in front of us, and as we chase the forecasts, we almost never get the carrot. Oh, well — it makes weather prediction a fascinating hobby.
The weather today through early next week remains the same: gusty east winds at times, periods of light rain off and on, and no freezing weather to be of any concern.
The mountains will get light snow off and on, so skiing conditions will remain favorable. No worries of local or river flooding, and no ice. What’s wrong with that?
Keep warm and safe, and watch for those breaks in the gray skies from time to time.
We’ll chat again on Sunday.
