By Gordon McCraw, Meteorologist for the Tillamook County Pioneer
We definitely had a cooler wet weekend with several moist cold fronts dropping through. A few of the rainfall totals from Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon verify this. Up in Clatsop County, Cannon Beach had 1.97”, the City of Tillamook had 2.15”, while Depoe Bay in Lincoln County recorded 2.96”. The local Coast Range had 1.31”. Down here in the South Valley area, in the City of Lebanon where I live, we hit 2.37”. It looks like the rainfall winners were Brownsville with 3.14” and Springfield near Eugene at 3.19”.
Today, we have the continued cool, onshore flow pushing in the post-frontal showers that are bringing us periods of showers, and with the air still being somewhat unstable as a trough of low pressure slides across, we also have a slight chance of thunderstorms today and tonight until around midnight. The winds today are westerly 10-15 gusting to 18, today’s high temperature only around 53. The winds ease some tonight, becoming westerly 5-10, low dropping to near 41.
Tomorrow, we see high pressure building back in which helps to diminish the shower activity and brings drier, partly sunny skies in the afternoon, winds westerly 8-12, highs near 56. We could see some patchy fog develop in the early morning hours as the winds finally die off, lows near 40.
The ridge continues to build Wednesday, bringing us some mostly sunny skies, the winds becoming northerly 5-10, highs warming to near 61, then mostly clear and breezy with the northwesterly winds becoming 10-15 gusting to 20, the low drops to near 43.
The ridge of high pressure looks to strengthen and continue to warm things up Thursday, so with sunny skies, the high climbs to near 74, overnight lows only fall to near 54.
The ridge continues to influence our weather Friday, bringing some warm easterly winds with the afternoon high temperature peaking at around 79, the low still only falls to near 53.
It appears the ridge will weaken some over the weekend, and start to slowly drift eastward, and this will lead to mostly sunny skies, the highs Saturday near 72, and 66 on Sunday, lows back into the upper 40s.
The National Weather Service gives us a word of caution over the weekend. With the warmer weather, folks will be tempted to cool down in area rivers, or maybe in the ocean. The warmer temperatures will also lead to increasing river flow rates, especially in the valley rivers, so look for the melting snow to lead to the rivers running fast and cold. The caution is that swim in the rivers, and even in the ocean where the temperatures continue to be in the low 50s, may be refreshing, but without proper equipment, hypothermia is a real danger. Every year we see drowning, or near drowning events because of cold water shock along with hypothermia causing unexpected loss of motor skills. The bottom line is to have fun but adhere to all water safety precautions…and stay safe!