Atmospheric river ahead — Saturday gloom, rain, wind is the start, forecasters say
An active series of storms from the Pacific made for a breezy Friday overnight into early Saturday, with rain expected in periods through most of next week.
Winds overnight from a series of storms rolling through Western Washington led to scattered power outages in the area. Peninsula Light announced scattered outages before 4 a.m. Saturday morning, primarily in the Gig Harbor area, while Puget Sound Energy showed outages spanning from just north of Centralia through the Puget Sound region to Redmond. Nearly 4,000 PSE customers remained without power after 9 a.m. across 84 still-active outages.
The National Weather Service’s Seattle office on Saturday offered a summary of the maximum wind gusts reported in the area in the first wave of storms. Tacoma had the second-highest wind gust reading over the past 24 hours, at 54 mph. Hoquiam topped the readings at 55 mph. Sea-Tac’s maximum wind gust registered at 52 mph.
Flooding was anticipated in the National Weather Service’s early weekend update, after a series of systems roll through the area in “quick succession through the middle of next week,” it stated.
The storms will bring snow to the mountains and lowland rain/wind across the region.
“By Sunday through early next week, these systems will transition to an atmospheric river pattern of gradually increasing intensity, resulting in rising snow levels, rising rivers, and a high risk of river flooding,” it added.
Saturday’s high was forecast to hit around 50, with a low in the low 40s, while highs Sunday-Wednesday in the 50s, and lows generally in the 40s.
A flood watch is in effect from Saturday evening through late Wednesday night for portions of Northwest and West Central Washington, including Clallam, Grays Harbor, Island, Jefferson, Kitsap, Mason, San Juan, Skagit and Whatcom counties, as well as King, Lewis, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties.
With high winds in the forecast through Monday, Olympic National Park on Friday announced on social media it was “proactively closing several coastal campgrounds and strongly cautioning visitors. On the Olympic Peninsula, a wind storm can mean life-threatening waves on the coast.”
This story was originally published December 2, 2023 at 10:08 AM.
