MOSES LAKE — Getting out and about Friday might be a challenge throughout the Columbia Basin, with the arrival of yet more precipitation, but this time with the chance of it falling as freezing rain.

“Most of the day Friday and Friday evening, we will see that snow transitioning to a wintry mix with some freezing rain mixed in as we get a warm front moving through,” said Charlotte Dewey, meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in Spokane. “This is something to expect, something to plan for.”

The forecast is for two to three inches of snow in Moses Lake and Ritzville, and three to four inches in Wenatchee, by the time precipitation stops falling. 

“It will start out as snow, then transition to rain and potential freezing rain,” she said. 

It might not be freezing rain, she said; it might be sleet instead.

“Sleet is more of the smaller, like, an ice ball or frozen raindrops. Whereas freezing rain, once it falls as rain, it freezes on contact to a surface and becomes ice,” Dewey said. 

Freezing rain probably will be falling somewhere in Eastern Washington by Friday afternoon. Dewey said that’s a result of ground temperatures that will stay pretty cold for a while Friday. 

“We’re very confident we will see freezing rain,” Dewey said. 

The amount of ice forecast for Grant County and the area north to Wenatchee is about 1/100th of an inch. However it falls, precipitation is forecast to slow down and stop Friday afternoon, she said. 

The sleet-snow-freezing rain was forecast to arrive in Moses Lake and Wenatchee early Friday morning and spread toward Ritzville by midmorning. Chances for freezing rain will increase in Spokane by midafternoon Friday. 

The culprit is the cold air that’s been stuck over the region for the last week or so being pushed out by warmer air coming up from the south, which carries the moisture with it. 

The chances for freezing rain are highest around Tri-Cities and east into the Palouse, she said. Othello, with about a 20% chance of freezing rain, is the location in the Columbia Basin at highest risk. A special weather briefing Thursday morning forecast about an 8% chance of freezing rain in Moses Lake. 

If it does become icy, how soon the ice will melt will depend on the warmer air from the southwest, Dewey said, and how fast it spreads north.

The chance of rain is forecast to increase to about 50% by Sunday afternoon into Monday, but warmer temperatures mean any precipitation early next week should fall as rain. Highs are forecast to be about 37 degrees throughout the region, from Wenatchee to Moses Lake to Ritzville, by Tuesday.

“We’re trending more toward the seasonal average,” Dewey said. 

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].