COEUR d'ALENE - Climatologist Cliff Harris said Friday afternoon's brief showers could be a hint of things to come.

According to Harris, a stray thundershower came through the Coeur d'Alene area, dropping two one-hundredths of an inch of precipitation on the Lake City. After spending most of Thursday asking area churches to have their congregations pray for rain, Harris said he received several comments Friday that the prayers had been answered.

"Well they need to continue praying because a couple of hundredths doesn't make any difference," Harris said. "It's a spit in the ocean, but we'll take it."

Other than a similarly brief rain in July, Harris said the region had gone without rain for close to two months before the thunderstorm rolled into town.

"I'm a little leery of thunder and lightning though, because we could be making a bad trade here if we just get a few sprinkles and get more fires from the lightning," he added.

The sprinkles offered little relief to firefighters battling blazes throughout the Northwest. It did however wet the sidewalk and clear some of the heavy smoke from the air.

"It was horrible this morning," Harris said of the smoke. "You could hardly breathe outside."

The climatologist told The Press he is continuing to monitor a storm developing in the Gulf of Alaska that could hit the region as early as next week. Just behind that weather pattern is another storm poised to land in North Idaho at the beginning of September, he added.

"So there's a couple shots in this rain rifle that we're looking at," Harris said. "We're hoping it will be more than we saw here because it was pretty puny today."

It was so puny that, according to Harris, the radar didn't show anything on it for the entire Inland Northwest when the storm hit.

"But the only rain on the whole map is right over Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where people have been praying," Harris said while speaking with The Press Friday afternoon. "I don't see rain anywhere else, so that's kind of interesting."