Plaincast
What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, decoded into plain English.
Revised in 3 passages since the 11:10 PM discussion. See every revision.
Showers return over the weekend. Southeast WA and the Central ID Panhandle will see the highest precipitation amounts with a 60-90 percent chance of receiving more than 0.25 inches of rainfall.
Warming and drying trend Monday through Thursday as the weekend system moves out, making room for a ridge of high pressure to build over the region.
Temperatures Friday will be around 10 degrees cooler than Thursday's with dry weather and light winds. Saturday and Sunday, a low pressure system will bring widespread chances of precipitation, isolated thunderstorm chances and another round of gusty winds. Monday through Thursday, conditions will trend warmer and drier as a ridge of high pressure builds over the region.
Friday: In the wake of Thursday's cold front, temperatures Friday will cool by 8-12 degrees, returning to below average in the upper 60s to mid 70s. For most of the region, Friday will be dry as the Inland Northwest sits in between upper-level systems. The northern ID Panhandle will be the one exception with a 15-30% chance of showers and isolated thunderstorms lingering into Friday afternoon. Instability looks rather weak again tomorrow (100-200 J/kg), so widespread lightning is not expected.
Saturday and Sunday: A significant pattern change arrives Saturday afternoon as a deep trough begins tracking inland from off the coast. Saturday morning and early afternoon is looking pleasant with highs ranging from the upper 60s to upper 70s. Winds will be breezy out of the north down the Okanogan Valley and out of the northeast across the Columbia Basin with gusts of 25 to 35 mph. Ensembles depict a swath of moisture moving up from the south Saturday afternoon into Sunday with precipitable water increasing to 150% of normal. Precipitation chances will start to move in Saturday evening as the atmosphere saturates. By Sunday morning, there will be a 60-90% chance of rain regionwide.
There is high confidence that most locations will see measurable precipitation, but significant uncertainty remains regarding total precipitation amounts. Overall, rainfall amounts are trending higher with each model run, but there are still substantial differences between the high-end and low-end amounts predicted by the models. For example, the 10th percentile (low-end) rain amount forecast for Spokane is just 0.1 inches, while the 90th percentile (high-end) amount is 1.4 inches!
As mentioned in the previous forecast discussion, the chances continue to trend higher for 0.5 inches or more of rain from Saturday evening through Monday morning. The the blend-of-models forecast's latest chances for at least 0.5 inches of precipitation are as follows:
45-60% for Central WA 60-80% for Eastern WA 75-85% for ID Panhandle
Temperatures Sunday will be well below normal in the 50s and 60s.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. The full Plaincast experience — plain-English summaries beside the annotated original, with the forecast changelog — loads automatically with JavaScript, or open the interactive edition.
Data from the National Weather Service. Translated by Claude. About · For developers & agents · Subscribe: RSS feed for this office · Source on GitHub