Dry, cold weather expected this week

After a chance of light snow on Tuesday, the weather is going to turn cold and dry going into the new year.

The layer of snow that is nearly a foot deep in Spokane will stick around with highs forecast to be in the 20s and lows mainly in the teens through Sunday.

National Weather Service forecasters said a temperature inversion will set up at lower elevations, allowing for freezing fog and low clouds.

Air quality is expected to go from the good to moderate range as pollutants build up in the lower atmosphere.

More than 4 feet of snow is on the ground at the Mount Spokane ski lodge.

Snoqualmie Pass reported 84 inches of snow Monday after getting pounded by repeated storms for the past two weeks.

Spokane International Airport has measured 23.4 inches of snow this month, including 2.2 new inches of snow Sunday and early Monday. That’s the most snow in December since the record-setting year of 2008, when 61.5 inches of snow fell in Spokane.

The heavy snow loads continue to trouble electric utilities. Avista, Inland Power & Light Co. and Kootenai Electric Cooperative reported a total of more than 600 outages Monday afternoon. Most of them were scattered across rural areas.

The U.S. Drought Monitor has upgraded its rating for the drought that came to the Inland Northwest earlier this year. The drought has been changed from extreme to the less-serious label of severe drought.

Mountain snowpack in northeast Washington and far North Idaho on Monday stood at about 100 percent of normal for this point in the season. The snowpack in the Cascades of Washington was about 140 percent of normal.

But the U.S. Climate Prediction Center is calling for below-normal precipitation and below-normal temperatures across the region in its eight- to 14-day outlook.