January 16, 2025

Drizzle and Fog Before the Cold Weekend

Last updated 1:00 PM, Thursday, January 16th, 2025

By: Gavin Clark, Ryan Krejcha, Kyra Schlezinger, & Eric Theumer

Hey Huskies! Happy Thursday!

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, there’s a light drizzle hanging over campus and the rest of Seattle. You can thank a very weak front that’s moving over the region for the drizzly weather; it’ll continue for a little while longer. Visibility in the city is low due to this and the fog that keeps settling thanks to a lack of sustained winds and soggy Seattle conditions. So be careful as you walk to classes, and don’t forget to wear warm layers! It’s chilly out there…

Chances for a light, isolated, shower continue through the evening hours for the Puget Sound. Accumulations will only be a few hundredths of an inch at most. The weak front will chase out any lingering fog in the afternoon before it builds back overnight after the front passes.

 

After the very weak front passes through, dry conditions are expected to continue for the foreseeable future. This dry spell can be attributed to a particularly stubborn set of high-pressure ridges that do not seem to want to budge from their location over the west coast. Models predict that this pattern will stick around at least for the next week.

 Even if the ridge is sticking around, tonight is the last night with fog in the forecast. Things look to be clearing up for the start of the long weekend, but as is often the case with clear winter nights, overnight lows will be much cooler. Expect low temperatures around the Seattle metro to be on either side of 30 degrees for the long weekend, which may make for some frosty mornings.

 

Taking a look across the country for people traveling over the holiday weekend, temperatures will be well below average throughout nearly the entire country as an arctic blast comes down from Canada. Lows are expected to drop below zero from the Rockies to the Appalachians. One of the coldest spots, Minneapolis, could drop as low as -25°F early Tuesday. The west coast is one of the warmer spots in the nation as the arctic blast misses us to the east, with lows not too far off the normals for this time of year from Seattle to San Francisco.

Don’t forget to bundle up this weekend, huskies!

Reach forecasters Gavin Clark, Ryan Krejcha, Kyra Schlezinger, & Eric Theumer at uwdawgcast@uw.edu, on X/Twitter @TheUWDawgcast, or on Instagram @uwdawgcast.