Weather Eye: Clouds clear, sun appears early in the week

Saturday behaved pretty much as forecast with lots of clouds, a few light, scattered showers and cool temperatures. That followed the cold front that gave us a gray day Friday with cold showers. Snow fell again in our foothills, down to about 1,200 feet.

Clouds should gradually break up today, and we will see sunshine in the afternoon. Any showers should remain in our foothills. This leads to more sunshine Monday through Wednesday and maybe Thursday, too.

Vancouver struggled to reach the 50-degree mark Friday, and as of Saturday late afternoon, we haven’t quite hit 50. Rainfall for the first seven days this month as of 4 p.m. Saturday was .40 inch. And yes, we are running below average again. What else is new?

The National Climate Service is predicting our weather the next ten days will continue on the cool side of things and rainfall at normal or below. That doesn’t surprise me. I certainly don’t see any frog strangler’s heading our way.

Let me warn you that each morning for the next three or four may have freezing temperatures even here in the inner-city locations. It will be a hard freeze in the outlying areas with temperatures in the 20s.

I know it is March and thoughts turn toward container gardening and prepping the ground for late spring planting. Just don’t start or set out any tender plants. It will be frosty. Those colorful pansies and primroses lining the entrances to our grocery stores can take the cold weather.

The full “worm” moon will be visible under mostly clear skies Monday night. It will be too cold for any nightcrawlers to be sneaking through the grass under the full moon however. Its namesake refers to earthworms that usually emerge from their long winter slumber and begin surfacing. By the way, it will be a supermoon and brighter than normal. Watch for its rise Monday evening after dark. There will be two more supermoons this year, one on April 7 and another on May 7.

Enjoy the break in the weather this coming week. Get outside and enjoy that extra hour of daylight.

Source: https://www.columbian.com