By Gordon McCraw, Meteorologist for the Tillamook County Pioneer
The old sailor adage is “Red sky in the morning – Sailor take warning.” This brings up the question though, why is this true? Well, this red sky in the morning means that a high pressure system has already passed and the red indicates there is a high moisture content in the atmosphere and likely indicates rain is on the way. The opposite of that, a red sky at night (sailors delight) suggests the moisture has passed off to the east and high pressure is moving in bringing fair skies. So, why do I bring this up? Well, I saw an eerily red sky this morning. All this to say, after a foggy start this morning, the rain returned to the region.
We have a front moving across and the rain will continue this evening that turns to post-frontal showers later tonight. The good news, this system is not as moisture rich as the previous systems, so we are probably only looking at between ½ to 1” of rain in total for this 24 hour period. We see light winds tonight, the low drops to near 42.
We should have some scattered showers tomorrow, mainly in the afternoon, winds becoming southerly 5-10, highs near 55, then in comes the next front tomorrow night bringing another round of rain starting by midnight, winds southerly 8-12 gusting to 20, lows near 46.
Sorry all my fellow Veteran friends…and thank you for your service but…Saturday Veterans Day looks rainy and windy with southwesterly winds 15-25 gusting to 40, a little higher at the beaches, highs near 57. Still cloudy and rainy that night, the winds slowly easing, lows near 44.
Sunday, we have a trough of low pressure drifting across, bringing more rain to the area into Monday, highs near 59, lows near 46.
Next week, there is a low pressure area drifting southward along the coast from the Gulf of Alaska. The forecast challenge is, where will this low pressure area go and will it spawn other weaker lows in the associated trough that will then rotate in over our area. All the answers look wet, the questions left are – how wet and when? The easy answer is to say, Monday on through at least the middle of next week looks cloudy and rainy with highs near 58 and lows near 45. Hopefully the models will offer a better picture by Friday’s forecast…