Summer surge gives way to sharp cooldown with wind, valley rain and mountain snow

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]All right, well those changes we've been anticipating for Wednesday are already starting to develop. So tonight will be impactful, but Wednesday is our first alert weather day as we will see widespread weather impacts from morning into evening. So shock to the system temperature-wise, I'm expecting high temps to plummet nearly 30° across the region. We'll have widespread Valley rain, heaviest in the morning, but isolated thunderstorms and showers will persist off and on throughout the afternoon. Look at this number. There's a potential on our highest mountain peaks in the central mountains, 18 to 20 in of snow is possible. Generally 6 to 12 or above 5,000 ft or so mountain valleys could pick up just a little bit as well and brisk blustery gusty winds.

[00:00:47]Those will set in tonight and actually will persist for several days even as the wet weather starts to taper off. So this is your warning before the winds arrive in the next few hours. Secure any loose outdoor items that you don't want to inadvertently gift to your neighbor.

[00:01:02]Travel and outdoor activities will be impacted during the day tomorrow. I do anticipate winter driving conditions to develop across those higher mountain passes above about 6,000 ft. So travel there definitely could be dicey over the blues as well. I'd anticipate that things could get a little bit messy there too over the next 24 hours.

[00:01:19]So let's walk through the future cast.

[00:01:21]Here's the clouds that have been spreading in and it's a warm but ominous looking evening. So if you want to pull up a chair, if you love a good kind of dynamic sky, might be a nice evening to just sit out on the patio and soak it all in, but you might be getting soaked if you're out there too long as by about 11:00 tonight or midnight, I'm anticipating some thunderstorms to fire up as that front pushes in. We're talking gusty winds, small hail, bursts of torrential rain. By the morning, here's about 7:00 to 8:00 tomorrow morning as we're all heading out the door across the Treasure and Magic Valleys, we'll likely see a steady rain for a couple hours tomorrow. Here's that snow that will be flying in the mountains. As the front pulls away off to the east tomorrow, it will take the heavy rain with it, but you can see splash and dash showers will persist throughout the afternoon. Some light snow continuing in the mountains and this particular model is now giving us a chance of one last kind of decent push of precipitation late tomorrow night as the system fully starts exiting off to the east. Now, there's the potential that we could see half an inch of rain to near an inch, especially west of Boise. I think the heaviest rain, just like we saw last week, is for the lower Treasure Valley of Oregon. Less amounts as you're lesser amounts, I should say, as you head east into the Magic Valley.

[00:02:30]Maybe a quarter inch for Twin Falls over the next 24 hours, but if we see even 600ths of an inch of rain, that puts this month as it's the top spot for wettest April ever in Boise. I think it's a sure bet that we set that record during the day tomorrow. In the morning, morning lows in the mid-40s, but remember this is going to be a wet 44° in Boise. Walk to the bus stop will be soggy as will be that drive into work.

[00:02:54]We'll only hit 52 in Boise, 49 for Twin Falls. We'll be up around 40 for McCall and Stanley. So snow levels rise during the day tomorrow. So mountain valleys will likely be seeing some rain in the afternoon, a cold rain, and those winds [music] could gust 30 to 40 mph throughout the day tomorrow, a very busy weather day. We keep the wind on Thursday, we keep [music] the wind on Friday. Frost territory develops Friday and Saturday mornings, but daytime highs slowly inch up [music] until finally next week, we're back into the 60s, but a chance of a sprinkle does persist long-term. We'll be right back.