The drying and warming trend will continue. A fairly stable flow coming around an eastern Washington low pressure center will give us mostly sunny morning conditions on Wednesday with enough residual moisture to give us some afternoon clouds, with only a slight chance of an isolated thundershower in the Pine Nut Mountains. Temperatures in the valleys warm up into the lower 80s on Wednesday, the mid-80s on Thursday and could be pushing 90 degrees by Saturday.

With all the changing weather we’ve had over the last several months, a reader wondered, “Why can people with arthritis tell a low pressure area is coming? Where in the US is the most stable barometer? We might go there next winter.”

I’ll start with the first question, and it is one that is still fraught with controversy. The most accepted explanation is that arthritic patients already have inflammation in their joints, and drops in pressure outside the body can aggravate that inflammation by causing the tissues to expand with the pressure change. But even that may not explain everything. I’ll tell you why tomorrow.