Snow, freezing rain forecast for next few days

MOSES LAKE — So far, the winter of 2017-18 hasn’t been that bad in Grant County. The little tiniest trace of snow, cold but not deep-freeze cold. Unfortunately, that’s not going to last.

The good news is, it’s supposed to snow before the freezing rain arrives.

The freezing rain is forecast for Thursday night and Friday morning, with rain later in the day Friday.

Or it could be a mix of snow, freezing rain and sleet. “There may be quite a difference in precipitation types,” depending on the location, said Steve Bodnar, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Spokane.

Not that it makes any difference when trying to chip ice off the windshield, but freezing rain and sleet aren’t the same thing. Freezing rain is rain all the way down to the ground, and freezes when it hits the ground.

Sleet is rain part of the way to the ground and freezes before it gets there, falling as ice.

Temperatures in the Moses Lake-Ephrata-Quincy area are forecast to hover around freezing, which means this area has the highest probability for freezing rain overnight, Bodnar said. “There’s some potential for five-hundredths to a tenth of an inch (of freezing rain).”

It should warm up enough during the day Friday so that the sleet-freezing rain-snow should turn into just plain rain in the afternoon, with a forecast high in Moses Lake of about 35 degrees. On the other hand, up in the mountains it’s going to be all snow. “They could be seeing a couple feet of snow” along the Cascade Crest, Bodnar said.

Making the turn into the New Year, it's forecast to be sun, then sun and clouds, Saturday and Sunday. Saturday’s high is forecast for about 37 degrees, but temperatures are forecast to drop back down to about 31 degrees Sunday. The first day of 2018 is forecast to be mostly cloudy, but no snow. Or sleet, or freezing rain.

It’s still a little early to tell, weather forecasting being a little inexact after about 10 days, but the first week of 2018 could be seriously wintery. “The storm track may become active again,” Bodnar said.

The 90-day outlook is for temperatures below normal and precipitation above normal.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].