Normal summer is in Eastern Washington's forecast

Finally the word "normal," appears in the weather forecast for the weeks ahead.

After eight months of off-the-charts wet weather the new season that snuck by at about 9:25 p.m. June 20 promises to be what we've come to know.

"Summer will be very normal," retired Eastern Washington University geography and meteorology professor Dr. Bob Quinn said. That means hot and dry.

"I'm not looking for an excruciatingly hot summer," he added.

But expect some sudden bouts of moisture, too, he warned.

With warmer water off the West Coast, when there is a disturbance it will tap into the abundant moisture, setting the region up for pretty decent thunderstorms. "We always have a few thunderstorms, but when we get them (this year) they could be pretty wet," Quinn said.

The changes in the months ahead will be because a "Pretty substantial El Nino pattern" is forming, Quinn said. That is fostered by warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the region of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.

"It doesn't look like it's going away, it's going to continue to develop," Quinn said.

That means an El Nino summer and winter.

"This past winter was considered a weak La Nina," Quinn said of the phenomena of cooler than normal sea surface temperatures.

Normally that means cooler, wetter, possibly snowy winters, which occurred with the Spokane office of the National Weather Service recording about 61 inches of snow through March 20 - well above the normal 45–50.

It was winter by the proverbial "a thousand cuts," or in this case, small doses of snow 2 to 5 inches at a time.

As for next winter, El Nino has two regular scenarios, one is the split flow with part of the storm track pointed at California, "Which is good news for them, they get a nice wet winter," Quinn said.

The other arm heads north into Southeast Alaska, leaving the Pacific Northwest in a winter drought pattern, such as 2009-10 with a near record low 13.3 inches of snow, or in 2014-15 with 17.6.

The other possibility is that the southerly flow is so strong that the Northwest gets clipped by the northern fringe of it, as in 2015-16 where snowfall totals were over 33 inches.

As much science as long-term weather forecasters have in determining what lies ahead in the coming months, there's always the unforeseen.

"Of course, who knows," Quinn said. "If I had to 'seat of my pants' look at it I'm kind of favoring - which may be wish fulfillment - a little bit more of the warm, wet variety."

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].