WeatherWatcher: December back to normal

Clouds before the rains, at Richmond Beach, winter season 2001-2002 on 35mm film.
Photo by Carl Dinse

The jet stream is back in the Northwest where it belongs during winter months. We are expecting a series of seasonal storms to move through this next week or so.

We have a slight break Monday with showers, before our next storm system moves in Tuesday morning. Rainy and breezy conditions are expected Tuesday and Tuesday night. Wednesday will be another "break" day with a chance of showers. Thursday a heavy rain storm moves in. The rain may be heavy at times, especially Thursday evening. More rain Friday, with a chance of rain next Saturday. Rain likely Saturday night and Sunday.

Temperatures all week and next weekend in the 40's for highs, lows in the upper 30's to low 40's. This is really good for mountain snow so it should hopefully help with that snow drought in the Cascades and Olympics we've been having this fall.

For December so far a dry and chilly start, but Sunday signals the change. Our first weaker weather system last Friday night into Saturday morning was too weak and most of the precipitation evaporated into the drier colder air near the surface before reaching the ground. The second system on Sunday brought us a half inch of rain. Here's the temperature and rain graphs for December:

For current weather conditions visit www.shorelineweather.com