You didn’t really think it was going to stay dry for long, did you?
After a brief respite Sunday from soaking rain, another series of storms is queued up to keep Western Washington soggy in the lowlands and snowy in the mountains at least through the middle of this week.
But it won’t be as bad as Saturday’s nonstop precipitation, said National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Cullen at the agency’s Sand Point office. “It’s going to be wet, but certainly nothing like that very heavy rain.”
The next system was expected to roll in to Western Washington overnight Sunday, with lowland rain, high elevation snow and breezy winds. Then another front will arrive Tuesday evening and persist into Wednesday.
After that, the outlook is a bit brighter.
“It does look like Thursday will be generally a drier day for most of the metro area,” Cullen said. “Beyond that, there’s still some question as to how much moisture will be coming in.”
By Sunday afternoon, the flood danger had receded for most rivers on the Olympic Peninsula and Washington’s inland southwest, Cullen added. The main exception was the Skokomish River in Mason County, which is expected to remain above flood stage for the next several days.
The storms early this week aren’t likely to push rivers back into the danger zone, Cullen said. But there’s a chance of minor coastal flooding from Port Townsend to Olympia on Monday morning, as high tides — called king tides — add to the abundance of water.
Landslide risks remain elevated. A slide blocked U.S. 101 near milepost 311 on the Olympic Peninsula on Sunday morning. Later Sunday, a larger slide between Mukilteo and Edmonds canceled Sounder north line service through Monday.
The second day of 2021 was wet enough to break several daily precipitation records around the region.
Quillayute recorded 2.77 inches, compared to the previous record of 2.03 inches in 1967. Olympia got 2.26 inches, shattering the previous record of 1.65 inches set in 1953. At NWS’s Sand Point office, the gauge registered 1.21 inches, compared to 0.89 inches in 2007. And at Hoquiam’s airport, Saturday’s 2.72 inches of rain was nearly an inch more than the previous record for the day — 1.81 inches in 1954.
The 24-hour snowfall totals were also impressive, from 23 inches at Mount Baker and 21 inches at Paradise, Mount Rainier, to 13 inches each at Snoqualmie and Stevens passes.
