Western WA weather: Heavy lowland rain, mountain snow ahead

Say it ain’t snow!

Mother Nature dumped a healthy 4 inches of snow north of Seattle early this week — and an incoming storm is expected to dump up to 4 feet in the mountains by Thursday.

Precipitation over the Emerald City, however, will continue to remain in the form of rain for the foreseeable future.

Tuesday afternoon featured a brief lull for most, before a “pretty strong system” from the Gulf of Alaska was expected to settle over the region, said Anna Lindeman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.

A southerly breeze was also expected to blow into the region, dragging in warmer air and coaxing temperatures back up the thermometer. Rain was expected to spread across the lowlands by nightfall as the snow elevation rises above 2,000 to 3,000 feet.

The system will continue and intensify into Wednesday, stalling over the coast and pulling in deep moisture from the Pacific. Conditions will turn wetter and gustier, as the system piles up heavy mountain snow and soaks the lowlands in heavy rain.

That aforementioned southerly breeze will bring gusts up to 40 mph across most lowland areas and up to 50 mph across the mountain passes Wednesday afternoon and evening, the weather service said.

The weather service issued a wind advisory from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday across the Seattle area.

“The mountains are going to be pretty slammed with snow, especially Wednesday,” Lindeman said, “so any travel through the passes is going to be very difficult and will be made even more difficult by those really gusty winds.”

Wind, rain and snow will ease Thursday as the storm deepens southward along the coast. A mass of cooler air will slide in over Western Washington, pushing the heaviest precipitation southward, the weather service said.

Through Thursday, the mountains are expected to pick up 2 to 4 feet of snowfall while the Seattle area measures 1 to 2 inches of rain, Lindeman said.