Weather Eye: Take good care as we await those less-cloudy days

Clouds were persistent Saturday with occasional light rain falling. As I wrote this column however, clearing skies were approaching the coast where it was partly sunny. Behind Saturday’s weather system we will see some scattered showers today and perhaps a thunderstorm.

Rainfall amounts from the beginning of the rain on Friday through 4 p.m. Saturday total about four-tenths of an inch, nearly half of what fell in April. That is impressive, don’t you think? April was more than 2 inches below average with less than an inch in the rain bucket, 0.91 inch, to be precise.

After the showers today, we have a weak weather system moving through Monday or Tuesday with just some light rain or showers. Weather forecast charts indicated Saturday that any rainfall would be light.

Beyond, as we discussed last week, high pressure builds and we will see our first 80-degree day either Thursday or Friday. With offshore winds from the east, we could be in the low ’80s.

Now, that won’t be too hard to deal with, eh? With Mother’s Day weekend coming up and the warm weather, it will be a good opportunity to plant the garden. I think our frosts are over with for most of us, except in those coldest outlying areas.

With a cooler air mass and all these clouds Saturday, we struggled to get the temperatures out of the 50s. As of this writing, Vancouver had reached 58 degrees, and yes, that is quite cool for May and about 7 degrees below the average.

A weather proverb says, “Don’t praise the month till it’s ended.” Yet the month of May certainly has some delightful traits on the basis of probabilities alone. The late spring-season warmth takes a big spurt forward thanks to the longer days and the gradual slowdown of the great weather machine out in the Pacific.

And something to ponder: May generally has fewer cloudy days than June. We look forward to those less-cloudy days shortly. Take good care.