SPOKANE, Wash. — A strong Atmospheric River is aimed at the northwest. This means we'll see several days of heavy rain, mountain snow melt, and a resulting flooding risk for Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.
A Flood Watch went into effect Monday through Thursday for all eastern Washington counties and most of North Idaho. Heavy rain just arrived over central Washington Monday morning and will begin for Spokane after 1 p.m. Monday. Starting then and through Thursday, we'll have on-and-off rainfall. The heaviest batches will be in the moments when the low level jet stream is pointed directly at us and thus will result in widespread rain for hours at a time.
The total amount of rain looks to be around 1-2" for Spokane and up to 3" for the panhandle of North Idaho over these next four days. That alone is impressive, but it's the snowmelt that'll put the flooding risk in play. Spokane's 5.6" of snow will melt quickly, and even the mountains will see a significant snowmelt. Temperatures will climb to near 50 degrees with snow levels above 7,000 feet. We're anticipating rivers and streams to jump in levels quickly this week and locations with poor drainage will be most susceptible to flooding.
You can do your part to assist in flooding mitigating by clearing and unclogging storm drains of any snow that would otherwise block the water from getting there.
Meanwhile, Seattle and the west side are expecting the same but at a higher magnitude. Up to five inches of rain to go along with even more snow melt, as the Cascades saw over three feet of snow in some areas.
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