Weather Eye: Warm weather might be on its way after a wet weekend

Not much news in the weather department as we continue our same old weather pattern with clouds, a few sun breaks, showers and afternoon highs ranging from below normal to near normal.

As you may have heard, forecast charts for next week indicate some warm weather as we reach the official calendar start to summer. Highs well into the 70s and maybe into the low 80s. But as we all know, that is a ways out so we’ll keep a weather eye for that one.

A break in the weather action today and Friday before more showers over the weekend. Boy, I am sounding like a broken record. Officially for Vancouver, the monthly rainfall is running below average by over one-half inch. As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, the total was .43 of an inch. Could our above-average monthly rainfall over the past two years be coming to an end? Too early to tell on that one.

Local weather observer Phil Delany took a hike up Silver Star Mountain on Tuesday and reported seeing snowdrifts of six feet. He figures snow could linger up there well into July. Although glancing at the hills to our east one can see little snow now, there is still plenty in the deep shady areas.

This spring in the U.S. was very wet across many states. The government reports that 46 percent of states had either wet or dry conditions in the top 10 of 102 years of record-keeping. For a color chart go to the National Climatic Data Center site at: http://tiny.cc/blxdg.

We hear of the raging fires in Arizona but a wildfire back in the middle of May destroyed about 40 percent of the town of Slave Lake in Alberta, Canada. You can do a Web search to see the amazing photos. At that time there were more than 115 fires burning in the province fanned by very high winds. Many of the 7,000 residents declared to news outlets that “The town is gone.”

A very active spring it is from wildfires to floods, tornadoes and rainstorms and massive snowfalls in the mountains. Certainly a year of extremes.

Enjoy the rest of your week and I will see you on Sunday. Careful dashing through the showers Saturday.

Pat Timm is a local weather specialist. His column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Reach him at http://weathersystems.com.