Finally Some Warm/Dry Weather But Then the Weekend Curse Returns

The first half of this month has been unusually wet over much of Washington State, with the exception being the lee (eastern) slopes of the Cascades, where strong downslope winds have provided drying (see below).

Over the past month in Seattle, we have had about 3.1 inches, about double the normal amount.  My garden is quite wet from it all. Wildfire danger is quite low.
The good news is that high pressure will build over the region, and according the European Center forecasts, the temperatures will zoom into the mid-70s on Friday...and conditions will be dry.


But then we get to the curse part of the situation:  a front will move in on Saturday (see 3-h precipitation forecast ending at 11 AM Saturday), with some showers hanging around into Sunday.



A powerful tool to check out the precipitation situation is to view the forecasts from the 51 member European Model ensemble (below).  The top panel shows the time when precipitation is predicted (shading) for each forecasts and the bottom gives the average of all 51 over time.  Precipitation starts around 5 AM on Saturday and then sticks around into Sunday. Not good.


Yes, there is a weekend curse here in western Washington and I do not have the prophetic skills to tell you when and if it will end.  It does appear that the situation will dry out by the middle of next week.

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