Now It’S Official: Winter Has Arrived Christmas Will Almost Certainly Be White

There’s no need to dream of a white Christmas in the Inland Northwest this year.

It’s a foregone conclusion.

The half-foot of snow on the ground in Spokane is likely to remain through the holiday and beyond, forecasters said.

“I think we’ll maintain the white Christmas,” said Ken Holmes of the National Weather Service in Spokane.

If anything, the snowpack could get a little deeper. Light snow is forecast for tonight, Friday morning and Saturday evening.

Winter officially arrives at 5:37 a.m. today, with the sun reaching its southernmost point in the sky.

In the Inland Northwest, late autumn sometimes looks as much like winter as the real thing.

Twenty inches of snow already has fallen at Spokane International Airport, and the thermometer has dropped into the single digits repeatedly. So far, December has been 5 degrees below normal.

Snowplow crews have worked overtime, and the region has suffered several spells of icy traffic mayhem.

Compared to the problems caused by snow and freezing rain last weekend, travel conditions over the Christmas holiday should seem like a cakewalk, Holmes said.

“Of course, it depends on what the snow crews do,” he said.

The storm track off the Pacific Ocean is bumping into a mass of stable air along the West Coast, so the next couple of storm systems are expected to split apart and weaken as they reach Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

Snow accumulations will be light Friday and Saturday.

Temperatures Saturday are expected to rise into the low- to mid-30s, causing a brief meltdown, but not enough to sully the whiteness of the holiday.

By Christmas Day, a northerly flow will re-establish itself over the region, bringing more winter cold with highs in the 20s and lows in the teens. The cold is expected to usher in periods of low clouds and fog in the valleys.

“We’ll get colder again during the early part of next week,” Holmes said.