Weather Eye: Rain, warming temperatures will continue this week

We’ll start off with the easy part, the weather forecast. Now that the cold air has left us here in the lowlands and high pressure has retreated as well, rain will be with us all week. We have a couple of storms that will produce some moderate to heavy rains and then decrease later in the week before more arrives over the weekend.

You will notice that temperatures warm as the week wears on into the upper 50s. Could we reach 60 degrees? Maybe if skies clear and southerly breezes are upon us. It took a while for the cold air to retreat, as is usually the case. Forecast models tend to scour it out too quickly. East winds are stubborn at times. The snow continues in the Cascades, but snow levels will rise a bit on Wednesday.

Looking back at the weather so far this month I can tell you Vancouver’s average mean temperature Monday was 36.6 degrees, 5.7 degrees below normal. We have had seven days with lows below freezing and the temperature extremes range from a chilly 17 degrees on Feb. 12 to a balmy 48 degrees on Feb. 1. Precipitation totaled 1.18 inches early Monday, about 1 inch below average. Upcoming rain will eat away at that deficit.

For us weather and climate folks, the official start of spring is only 11 days away. March first ushers in the spring weather into the climate records. It still appears the remainder of the month will be warmer and wetter than average.

Have you ever wondered why they place percentages in the weather forecasts for precipitation? Personally, I don’t care for it. Confusing to many. Most people only want to know if it is going to rain or not. The National Weather Service uses the following ideology: “The probability of precipitation begins with the probability that a given area will receive .01 of an inch or more precipitation. Precipitation is gathered for your general area, but it doesn’t mean it will precipitate where you are located.” Following along?

Wording like slight chance, a chance, likely and definite include these percentages. A slight chance is 15-29 percent; a chance is 30-59 percent; likely is 60-79 percent and definite is 80-100 percent.

A “chance” means scattered precipitation, but you could stay dry. “Likely” means widespread precipitation and staying dry are slim. If it is 80-100 percent you’re going to get wet.

We’ll likely chat on Thursday, take good care.