The change in the weather pattern begins today with more clouds and moisture in the air. Light rain will develop and continue into Friday when it becomes heavier. Rainfall so far this month in Vancouver is nearly three-quarters of an inch below average and unless we can make it up by midnight tonight, it will go in the record books as another month below normal.
I do expect about a quarter of an inch to fall at least by midnight, but we’ll see if we get heavier amounts. The second in a series of storms arrives Friday with a half-inch of rain, which will begin the rises in our local streams and rivers.
Over the weekend we expect a couple of pineapple express events back-to-back with several inches of rain possible. As always it depends on where the fire hose is aimed, but heavy rain from Oregon to British Columbia will occur.
Good news and bad news for the mountains. With the colder air that has settled in, precipitation will start off as snow and with brisk westerly winds, the upslope effect will be amplified, and heavy snow will fall above 3,000 feet. The upper ski resorts will receive close to 3 feet of snow before freezing levels rise Saturday night. The second pineapple express arrives Sunday in earnest and all that snow in the mountains will get saturated by heavy rain.
