Local

More rain Sunday, flood watch in effect

SEATTLE — A lingering convergence zone will bring light rain to parts of the North Sound. It’s hovering around the King/Snohomish County line.

A Flood Watch for Western Washington is in effect through Sunday. An additional factor that becomes a bit more of a threat with time is how soggy the ground is getting. We will have a higher risk of shallow landslides or slips through the weekend (even if it isn’t raining) and also trees with weaker root systems could fall over in the windiest times.

This time period will be marked by warmer temperatures with the bonafide atmospheric river originating north of Hawaii and also snow levels in the mountains rising to 6,000 feet. It will be all rain with this event at the lower passes, but all the additional rain (instead of snow) in the mountains will run off into area rivers. Those rivers will be running at or near bank full, and a few will flood.

While most of the rain has ended for now, the Skokomish River near Potlatch was already reported at flood stage early Sunday morning. Thankfully, this morning’s break will allow for rivers to recede Sunday night into Monday.

We’ll get another more modest round of rain Monday before three days of drier weather Tuesday through Thursday.

The newest concern for Monday will be the chance of lowland snowflakes mixing in for the afternoon/evening time. Cold air from the north will slowly push in as the low sags further south. The cold air and the moisture will increase the chance of a few snowflakes making to around 1000′ later in the day Monday. Right now we are watching the forecast very closely--no major impacts with this expected, but a few flakes might make it into the foothills.

Tuesday through Thursday it will be chilly, but dry with early morning fog and afternoon sunshine. Frost and freezes will be widespread on several of those mornings with black ice and freezing fog issues. Christmas Day could get rainy once again and that continues into the weekend.

>>The below graphics show the total rain accumulations starting from Friday morning through Monday night.<<

Sunday forecast rain totals
Monday forecast rain totals