Blowing white stuff to blow over
Rodney Harwood/Columbia Basin Herald Above: Crews work to remove the snow and ice from the roof at the Multimodal Transit Center at 116 West Fifth Ave. on Wednesday afternoon. Below: Snow removal crews were out all over Moses Lake on Tuesday, digging out from the latest winter blast to come through. Temperatures are expected to drop to below zero and then warm up by next week.
Rodney Harwood/Columbia Basin Herald Snow removal crews were out all over Moses Lake on Tuesday, digging out from the latest winter blast to come through. Temperatures are expected to drop to below zero and then warm up by next week.
MOSES LAKE — The message from the Grant County Sheriff’s Office, issued at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday, was to the point. “Stay off Grant County roads,” it said. “It’s very bad and you’ll probably get stuck in a snowdrift.”
The accompanying press release said “too many roads to count (were) blocked by 3-to-5-foot-tall snowdrifts and abandoned vehicles.” In a later release the sheriff’s office said deputies had responded to more than 40 calls concerning cars that had tangled with snowdrifts and lost.
The drifting snow forced school to be canceled Wednesday in Moses Lake, Ephrata, Quincy, Othello, Wilson Creek and Warden, along with Moses Lake Christian Academy. Again. While kids may rejoice now, the lost days will have to be made up, possibly by being added to the end of the school year.
The relatively strong winds caused temperatures to plunge overnight Tuesday, with wind chill values dropping below zero. The winds died down Wednesday morning, but temperatures dipped back to around zero (or a little colder) Wednesday night. Highs Thursday and Friday are forecast to be less than 15 degrees, with lows somewhere between five below zero and five above, according to the National Weather Service.
So. When’s spring?
Well, while spring is still a ways off – 67 days or thereabouts – it will get warmer. And then rain is in the forecast, probably beginning about next Tuesday.
The cold dry air that’s a result of high pressure currently over the region should yield to wetter, warmer air beginning by about Sunday, said Steve Bodnar, meteorologist with the NWS office in Spokane. “A warming trend with several episodes of precipitation,” he said. The forecast says temperatures will break 20 degrees by Sunday and could get above freezing by Monday and Tuesday.
Even Tuesday night temperatures are forecast to be at or slightly above freezing – but that might bring a different problem with it. The warmer temperatures are forecast to be accompanied by winds out of the southwest. “Typically (the winds) will melt the snow pretty rapidly.”
The recently fallen snow was – as snow goes – pretty dry, Bodnar said. The snow will act like a sponge and absorb some of the rain, he said. But warm wind and rain on top of the snow will produce slush and, depending on the location and the amount of snow, maybe flooding. That’s most likely in places with creeks and small rivers clogged with ice, or towns with frozen storm drains, he said.