One more snowstorm headed to Basin this week
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald On a summer Monday it would be one of the busiest spots in town, but on a winter day city crews have plenty of time to clear the sidewalks at the Surf ‘n Slide water park.
MOSES LAKE — On Groundhog Day one of those pictures was bouncing around the internet, a picture of a cranky-looking wolf. “The groundhog predicted six more weeks of winter,” it said. “So I ate him.”
Right now that wolf has a lot of sympathy.
The winter of 2016-17 has turned out to be That Winter, the winter that people will gladly forget when it finally ends. It won’t come up again until the next winter like this, when people will talk about the awful weather and say there hasn’t been a winter like it since 2016-17.
The snow that predicted for Sunday showed up right on time, although this storm only dumped about an inch or two of snow in the Moses Lake area. And unfortunately That Winter – cold and snow and freezing rain and more snow and more cold - probably isn’t over yet. “We do have one more round coming up” around mid-week, said Bryce Williams, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Spokane.
The good news is the inclement weather should be followed by some sun, and temperatures that could break 40 degrees by the weekend.
That beautiful sunny Monday morning gave way to clouds, and those clouds are forecast to produce snow Wednesday and rain Thursday. Snow is likely Wednesday and Wednesday night, according to the NWS website, with it switching over to rain by Thursday morning.
But as the rain turns to snow there’s a “transition period,” William said. The NWS website calls it a wintry mix, and what that means is a mix, all right – snow, sleet, rain and possibly freezing rain.
About 2 to 3 inches of snow is forecast for Wednesday, with rain likely Thursday from about 10 a.m. and a 30 percent chance of rain Friday.
Williams cautioned temperatures are forecast to hover right around the freezing mark both Wednesday and Thursday, so there could be more snow or more rain, depending on where the temperatures actually end up, he said.
The approaching system is not strong and isn’t packing a lot of rain, Williams said, so forecasters say there’s a relatively small chance of flooding.
As for what happens after the weekend, that’s up to Mother Nature. Forecasting not being an exact science, Williams said the NWS looks at historic trends when making predictions. The prediction for February forecasts a slightly higher-than-normal chance for above normal temperatures and above normal precipitation.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.