November 20, 2021

Forecast: November 20th, 2021

By Conor Finneran

Good afternoon on this sunny November Saturday! With mostly clear skies in place, temperatures will get quite chilly tonight with lows in the mid to upper 30s. Tomorrow temperatures will be very similar to today, with slightly more clouds in place.

Monday temperatures will warm up a bit with highs around 50 degrees versus upper 40s. Mostly cloudy skies will be with us, with rain beginning in the evening. Rain should remain light to moderate Monday night, with showers persisting into the day Tuesday. Wednesday will remain mostly dry with mostly cloudy skies and a few stray rain showers in the area. In the higher elevations snow showers are also looking likely, potentially making Thanksgiving travel a bit more difficult.

Overnight Wednesday a large surge of moisture will move towards the Pacific Northwest. As of right now, its unfortunately looking like Thanksgiving will be quite the wash-out. Similar to our last atmospheric river, it looks like the heaviest of the precipitation will be aimed at British Columbia as opposed to our area. Moderate rain will still be in place for most of the day Thanksgiving with precipitation amounts in excess of one inch possible. This atmospheric river does not look at all to be as significant as the last, but given the unfortunate timing, definitely exercise caution while traveling Thanksgiving Day.

Beyond Thanksgiving its looking like a slightly wet and warmer than normal pattern will take place.

With nearly 8 inches of rain falling in Seattle this month, many Washingtonians are definitely sick of the rain. One good sign is the fairly dramatic drought improvement across Washington over the last 3 months. Our current drought monitor (left) shows virtually no drought in all of western Washington, and greatly reduced severe, extreme, and exceptional drought conditions in eastern Washington since three months ago (right).

Have a great weekend!