Ready for days of rain? Wednesday had a delightful high of 74 degrees as of 5 p.m., but we will have to wait a while longer for a repeat.
That high was the warmest since April 7, when it was also 74 degrees. Both highs are the warmest so far this year.
The other day, I mentioned that I’d gone through a downpour in Hazel Dell and the raindrops were the size of quarters. I had several emails asking how that could happen.
Yes, our raindrops are usually smaller than that. With warm fronts, the size can be small when light rain or drizzle occurs with stratiform clouds. With cold fronts, the drops are usually larger.
In Saturday’s case, we had cold, unstable air aloft, and the instability caused many of the raindrops to be carried back up into the cloud where coalescence occurred, and the droplets enlarged and fell once again to the earth. If they do this several times, they can grow quite large. Same idea with hailstones, but without the freezing.
So, what about Mother’s Day, you ask? I mentioned Tuesday that I thought it would be more dry than wet and there would be scattered showers. The odds now favor more wet than dry. We’ll see.
Earlier in the week, there was hope for much warmer and drier weather by the middle of next week. Well, that sure vanished quickly. On Sunday, we will look at the latest guidance and see where that bit of brightness went. There may still be a glimmer of hope, but I tend to be optimistic.
The latest outlook into the middle of the month still keeps us cooler than normal but now keeps us drier than average.
For most of us, Mother’s Day is a benchmark to set out annual flowers and plant some warm-weather crops. I was forced to set out annual plants because they outgrew their containers.
I think I’d wait another week for the garden. More cool weather is still on the horizon.
