Weekend weather: Warm and breezy with showers on Sunday

The next several days are going to be warm and maybe a bit breezy at times with a chance of showers arriving on Sunday, mainly south of Spokane.

The Inland Northwest is currently sandwiched between a low pressure area along the Canadian border and British Columbia while a mild high pressure system is anchored to the south.

National Weather Service forecasters said it appears that the high pressure area is going to win out against the low and keep pumping nice springlike weather into the region through Saturday.

Sunny skies are expected Thursday and Friday with highs in the middle to upper 70s.

Clouds start to appear on Saturday as a new low from the Pacific coast approaches Oregon and sets off showers to the south and southwest of the Spokane area.

Even so, highs should still get into the middle 70s on Saturday and low 70s on Sunday as the Pacific low moves inland.

The low should slide eastward across Oregon into central Idaho, but there is a chance that if its migration moves closer to Washington and North Idaho that it could set up a band of wrap-around moisture to trigger wet conditions.

As of Wednesday afternoon, forecast models were calling for the low to cross through Oregon and to graze southeast Washington, the central Idaho Panhandle and possibly the Palouse region on Saturday night and Sunday.

Spokane was being given a slight chance of precipitation on Saturday night and Sunday.

During the past month, average temperatures have been 6 to 8 degrees above normal across the Inland Northwest for the period of April 8 through May 7, the weather service said on Monday.

The region’s snowpack continues to melt down and now is at 41 to 59 percent of normal for this point in May.

Last year’s drought was worse with snowpacks in the region running as low as 32 percent at this same time of year.