It’s Back—Just Like That

From zero to six one-hundredths in less than 60 minutes.

That’s how long it took for Seattle to go from a precipitation-free 2013 to the inevitable—a 37-degree rain strong enough to drop .06 inches in the gauge at Sea-Tac before the six o’clock hour ended. Besides accounting for the first showers of the year in Seattle, the damp weather also snapped our much-deserved dry spell at four days—the city’s longest since early fall.

With a moist Pacific front currently moving through the region, showers will continue falling the rest of tonight, adding up to another .10 inches or so by morning. Temperatures, which have consistently sunk below freezing the past several nights, will actually rise this time around, climbing into the mid 40s by sunrise.

The rain should begin tapering off later in the morning, with a dry Friday afternoon on tap for Puget Sound. Cloudy skies, however, will hang tight—a noticeable change from the winter sunshine that’s dominated the weather picture since last Sunday. Highs should top out around 45 degrees as the mercury returns to normal after a stint of chilly readings.

We stay dry Friday night into Saturday morning, before another weak front tosses some showers our way later Saturday night. The rain won’t amount to much—in fact, many places around Seattle might eke by with just a trace of precipitation—but it will be cloudy nonetheless.

A switch to somewhat soggier weather arrives on Sunday, with a decent rainmaker dumping up to half an inch of rain around the metro area during the daylight hours. Amid the steady rain, high temperatures should fall back a few notches, peaking in the lower 40s.

Moderately wet conditions look to continue through the early part of next week, as a string of rainy weather systems pass through the Northwest.  Beyond that, a shot of chilly air is possible in the Wednesday timeframe—lowering snow levels into the 500-foot range.

And raising hopes for something colder than the 37-degree rain plaguing us tonight.