By Gordon McCraw, Meteorologist for the Tillamook County Pioneer
So, if it looked like I disappeared over Christmas, I got a special gift from an unknown person, I had/have the flu, and a severe case at that. I am slowly coming back so you should see things returning to ahh, I think the word is normal? Other things that happened over the Christmas period were lots of rain. On Christmas Day we saw around 2.61” of rain in the Tillamook Area with several more days of between 1” and 1.5” of rain, then add to this on the 26th, Astoria recorded wind gusts of 64, Tillamook 59, and Pacific City 67. The winds caused a lot of work for TPUD and the rain caused a couple of the rivers to reach near bankfull a couple of times. Now the good news, the weather is slowing down, finally!
After a day with scattered showers, tonight we see a ridge of high pressure moving in. This will give us partly cloudy skies with calm winds which allow for some radiational cooling tonight, so the low looks to fall into the mid 30s. There is still a slight chance of a light shower sneaking in, especially near the Coast Range.
As another system approaches on Tuesday, the last day of 2024, we see increasing clouds, there is a chance of some widely scattered showers in the afternoon, the winds becoming southeasterly 4-8, highs near 48. The rain returns tomorrow night, still the light southeasterly winds, lows near 38.
Welcome to the first day of 2025 (Wednesday) that is highlighted by, yep, you guessed it, more rain from another front that will move through. The winds will only be southerly 4-8, the high near 51, the rain continues Wednesday night, lows near 42.
A look at the models for Thursday on shows us under a southwesterly flow with a ridge just to the east and a trough approaching from the west with a couple of low pressure areas thrown into the mix just to make the forecast more challenging. What all this means for us is, continued cloudy with more rain each day, including the weekend. High temperatures remain in the low to mid 50s, lows in the low to mid 40s.
I do see where the Climate Prediction Center is hinting that we could see warmer and drier weather in the 8 to 10 day forecast. I looked at the long range models myself and they appear to support this with a large high pressure area centered over the eastern Pacific with an associated ridge pushing up past Vancouver Island and this pattern appears to persist for that whole week. We’ll see …
