Region’s weather forecast returns to normal: rain

SEATTLE — After snow and ice storms, most Western Washington residents welcome the forecast return of rain, even though it comes with a chance of flooding.

Warming temperatures Friday should melt snow and ice in western part of the state, although snow will continue to fall in the Cascades and much of Eastern Washington where the cold and chance of freezing rain will linger into the weekend, the National Weather Service said.

The melting snow could cause urban and small stream flooding and fill the Skokomish and Chehalis rivers above flood stage by Saturday evening. More rain is forecast early next week that could make flooding more of an issue.

“We’ve scoured a good part of the cold away,” said meteorologist Mike McFarland at the National Weather Service office in Seattle, and now it’s back to normal.

A series of frontal systems will bring rain to the lowlands and snow in the mountains over the next few days, he said. “There are three, four or five of them lined up across the Pacific.”

The system that brought the ice storm to Western Washington on Thursday has petered out over the Midwest, McFarland said.

“Even though it was interesting here, it’s not an extensive storm that will do much of anything anywhere else,” he said. “It was unusual but not exceptionally potent, otherwise.”

“It rained into cold air, and ice storms are rare for Western Washington,” he said. “We don’t get one every year.”