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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Rare snowfall sees winter out

The last day of winter in the Inland Northwest brought something that’s been all too rare across the region for the past two months: snow.

Traces of snow on Saturday morning colored the ground in the Coeur d’Alene area and in some higher elevations around Spokane.

The National Weather Service issued a snow advisory for 1 to 2 inches in northeast Washington from Deer Park northward and areas of North Idaho north of Coeur d’Alene for Saturday night.

Chances of rain were expected in most low-lying areas of the region through Monday morning.

In the mountains, several additional inches of snow were forecast above 4,000 feet, with the exception of Shoshone County, where the snow level was predicted to rise to 5,000 feet.

The wintry forecast came as the calendar was about to change to spring at 4:33 a.m. today.

It offered some relief from what was an abnormally dry winter across the region, but this weekend’s precipitation wasn’t expected to end the specter of drought later this year.

“It certainly does help,” said John Werner, forecaster for the National Weather Service in Spokane. “Anything we can get up there for snowpack would be great.”

Mountain snow depths at the end of March are considered critical for feeding streams and rivers through the summer.

In early March, the snowpack in North Idaho was measured at about 30 percent of normal. As of Saturday, it stood at 41 percent as measured at a series of automated reporting sites.

The snowpack improvement came as nearly 19 inches of snow fell over a three-day period ending Saturday morning at Lookout Pass along Interstate 90 on the Idaho-Montana state line. The ski resorts there and at Silver Mountain were scheduled to operate today. Other ski areas in the region were closed.

Despite the additional snow, the U.S. Drought Monitor shows most of the Inland Northwest has fallen under a severe drought, the second level in four stages of drought measured by the monitor.

Forecasters on Saturday said the recent rounds of storms do not signal a change from the persistent dry pattern of recent months.

Werner said computer forecast models on Saturday were calling for a return to dry conditions by midweek.

He said he expected between 0.10 and 0.25 inches of rain in Spokane between Saturday evening and Monday morning, not enough to reverse the shortage of precipitation in the area.

As of Saturday, Spokane had accumulated only half of its normal precipitation for the October to March period.

On average, the city receives almost 10 inches of precipitation from Oct. 1 through March 18. This year, the total stood just shy of 5 inches.

Snowfall for the same period averages 44 inches.

This year, just 24.1 inches of snow was measured at Spokane International Airport, the city’s official reporting station, including 0.1 inches of snow on Saturday morning.