Two storms down, three more to go: Wet and windy forecast continues

SEATTLE -- Two storms down, three more to go in this current stormy cycle through the weekend.

Thursday starts out wet and windy. The gusts will be around 35 mph for most, but a few places will jump above that.

Thursday afternoon will have less rain and wind, but the next storm will be heading in.

Friday will be windy again, and by the lunch hour we could have gusts up to 40 mph for the Metro with more rain at that time.

The next gusty period will be Sunday. Plan on some windy periods throughout the next five days and beyond, creating some local power outages. Most of next week looks fairly windy too.

SNOW

The mountains will get snow daily for the next week or so, but the snow level goes above the passes most of the time.

The snow level jumps to 5,000 feet Thursday and higher on Friday. The snow level drops below the passes on Saturday but that day looks mainly dry.

Snoqualmie ski areas may have a rough start this weekend as the snow level is higher than the resort. Standby for that one, but the other ski areas are happy!

RAIN

Tons and tons of rain will be coming through, but the main metro benefits from the rain shadow off of the Olympics, so Seattle gets way less than Olympia, Bellingham and the coast. That means the Olympic Mountain rivers are likely to flood over the next week or more.

Welcome to the stormy season, and thank you El Nino for fewer storms than normal.