What can Tri-Cities expect in January? Weather service looks ahead

More freezing rain may be headed to the Tri-Cities, according to the National Weather Service.

A storm system is expected to pass through later in the week.

Only a slight chance of freezing rain is forecast for Thursday and Thursday night, but chances will increase for freezing rain until mid-morning Friday, turning to rain in the afternoon.

Freezing rain also is possible Friday night in the Tri-City area, according to the weather service.

In more encouraging news, the weather service is not predicting as cold and snowy weather this month as Tri-City residents had to cope with a year ago.

The outlook for the month is for near normal temperatures and precipitation, according to the weather service.

Normal highs for the Tri-Cities in January are about 41 degrees and normal lows are 28 to 29 degrees. Average precipitation for the month is about 1 inch.

December was slightly colder than usual, with temperatures averaging about 1.4 degrees below normal in the Tri-Cities.

The coldest temperature was 11 degrees at the Tri-Cities Airport on Christmas Eve, according to the weather service.

One daily temperature record was set at the Hanford Meteorological Station, which keeps records back to the mid-1940s.

Dec. 18 set a new record for the warmest temperature for the date, 58 degrees. The previous record was 56 degrees, a temperature recorded most recently in 1999.

The Tri-Cities saw snow for the second month in a row in December.

The Tri-Cities Airport had 4 inches of snow in December, and Kennewick had 4.5 inches of snow, according to the weather service.

Hanford was drier, with just 2.8 inches of snow at its meteorological station in December. Its total for November and December is 6.1 inches.

What people may remember most about December is the sidewalks and roads turning into sheets of ice.

At Hanford freezing rain fell on seven days, most recently Dec. 28 and 29, according to the Hanford Meteorological Service.

Precipitation for December in the Tri-Cities totaled about 0.9 to 1 inch, depending on where it was measured. It was slightly below normal.

The year just ended was wetter than usual in the Tri-Cities.

In Kennewick, precipitation totaled 10.3 inches in 2017, which is about 2.6 inches above normal, according to the weather service.

The peak wind gust in the Tri-Cities in December was 52 mph, as recorded Dec. 18 at the Tri-Cities Airport.

At the Hanford station, the peak gust was 34 mph the next day.

This story was originally published January 2, 2018 at 5:41 PM with the headline "What can Tri-Cities expect in January? Weather service looks ahead."