Weather Eye: After today, region will enjoy an extended dry spell

Friday’s cold front was sure in a hurry, arriving around 6:30 a.m. and departing by 9:30 a.m. Vancouver recorded .21 of an inch of rain during the fast-moving weather front.

Cold air will settle in behind the front, and we’ll have a chance of a shower or two early today before we enter an extended dry spell.

If you like uneventful and tranquil weather, then next week is for you. We should enjoy mostly sunny skies beginning Sunday, with friendly easterly winds present. This will keep high temperatures where they should be in January: mostly between 44 and 47 degrees. Overnight lows away from the Columbia River, where winds tend to slack off at night, will be in the 20s. Everyone will have freezing temperatures and widespread frost.

Whether these lows will be the coldest of the season so far remains to be seen. Remember that the first six days of December had low temperatures in the 20s with 24 degrees on Dec. 2, our coldest so far. With the wind and temperatures in the low 40s, even with sunshine overhead, wind chills will be in the 30s. Winter jackets are in the hallway closet.

With mostly clear skies before the cold front Friday, temperatures around Clark County away from the Columbia River were in the 30s, with some locations at freezing. When the rain arrived around 6 or 6:30 a.m., it warmed up to the upper 30s. Regardless, early-morning commuters faced a chilly rain.

One bright note in our fair weather coming up will be the full wolf moon on Monday evening. With clear skies expected, it should be a shiny ornament of a new year awakening. As it rises to our east, it will receive the full light of the sun that has lowered below the western horizon — a bright and cheery celestial face. It is thought that its namesake wolves howl more at night in the cold month of January. Hungry, cold or frightful?

With a full moon ahead, I’ll leave you on moonbeams with this old saying: “The sunset embers smolder low, The moon climbs o’er the hill, The peaks have caught the alpenglow, The robin’s song is still.” — John L. Stoddard