Record dry summer for some, relief in site?

Now that it's October, let's reflect back on the past three months.  Has this summer seemed dry to you?  Summer is after all the driest time of the year and many of our recent summers have been very dry.  Let's take a closer look.

July through September finished much drier than normal over much of the region as the image below shows.

As you can see, just about everyone finished in the bottom 10% (orange shading) in terms of total precipitation.  And several locations in and near the Columbia Basin reported their driest (red shading) July through September on record.  Here is the data below to prove it

You can see from the table above that Wenatchee, Ephrata, Grand Coulee, Lind, and Davenport reported a new record (or record tie) for the lowest July through September precipitation.  Ritzville and Omak came in 2nd, with Spokane and Pullman 3rd place.

And we still have that dry steak going in Ephrata.  After today it will be 109 consecutive days without measurable precipitation.

We are watching a weather system that will spread rain into portions of the area Friday afternoon into Friday night.  Right now the brunt of it should pass south of Interstate 90.  Ephrata will be on the edge.  Here is one model run from late this evening (Oct 3rd) showing rain amounts for Friday.

00z (Oct 4th) GFS Model 12 hour precipitation forecast valid 11 AM - 11 PM PDT Friday, October 5th.

Looking ahead to next week models are advertising a cold trough settling into the region with a possible increased threat of precipitation.   The long range outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center valid Oct 9-13th show high confidence of colder than normal temperatures with slightly elevated odds of wetter than normal. 

Wondering about the winter outlook?  We plan on updating the blog later this month talking about El Nino and its potential impacts for the Inland Northwest.