Over the next week and possibly longer, heavy rain and snow, high winds and large waves are anticipated from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California
||| FROM WASHINGTON POST |||
A series of powerful atmospheric rivers is poised to strike the West Coast beginning Friday and possibly lasting into early February. The dynamic weather setup has the potential to fuel flooding anywhere from western Canada to Southern California over the next week, as a supercharged jet stream races across the Pacific over unusually warm waters amid a strong El Niño. How the pattern will evolve is far from certain, however, and many parts of the West running behind on rain and snow this season will benefit from the injection of moisture.
The prolonged stormy period kicks off Friday with a landfalling atmospheric river on the California-Oregon border. A second storm following close behind is set to target the Pacific Northwest on Sunday.
But all eyes are on the strongest system in the series, which is forecast to make landfall Tuesday in British Columbia and eventually progress southward as far as Southern California, bringing heavy rain, snow and high winds to a large swath of the West.
Moisture will surge into the Pacific Northwest and western Canada on Friday as strong atmospheric rivers strike the region into early next week. The southern coast of Oregon could see 5 to 6 inches of rain in less than 24 hours through Saturday. In some spots, storms could reach top-tier levels of 4 and 5 on the atmospheric river scale, indicating mostly hazardous rainfall conditions.
More than a foot of rain could fall on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington over the next week, while warmer temperatures and high snow levels could lead to quick rises on area rivers.
“Confidence is increasing [in] periods of moderate to heavy rain over western Washington between Friday and Tuesday,” the National Weather Service office serving Seattle wrote Thursday. “Flooding concerns are increasing, especially for rivers already running high, including the Skokomish.”
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