Lohmann: Dry Weather Expected Through the End Of February

If you need to work out in the orchard, or if you have livestock to watch, the past month has been nice weather wise. A lot of sunshine during the daytime with temperatures slightly above normal. However, that beautiful weather has returned the region to dry, and in some cases very dry conditions. Marilyn Lohmann, meteorologist with the National Weather Service said the water year, which kicked off October 1^st, started very strong with rain and snow showers.

“All of that was going great through the midpart of January and then things, as you mentioned, its been dry and sunny and fairly mild and not even a lot of precipitation in the mountains.  Unfortunately for the calendar year, we are looking fairly short, a lot of places are less than 50% of normal for the calendar year.  If we do go back to the water year, they are between 70%-80%, maybe a few up near 90% of normal.”

Lohmann added with soil temperatures starting to warm across the PNW, those dry conditions are become more evident. And she noted it doesn’t look like this dry pattern will change anytime soon. Lohmann said she expects temperatures to cool in the coming weeks but precipitation to remain below normal.

"Those outlooks do show the flow becoming a lot more northerly the high pressure kind of retreats to the west, and that allow more cold, northerly flow in, but that flow is of a dry variety where at this point it doesn’t look like we’re going to see a lot of precipitation out through the end of the month.”

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