PORTLAND, Ore. -- Friday is the last official day of winter, but springtime weather has been hanging around the metro area a few days and could stick around through the weekend, according to the KGW First Alert Storm Team.
KGW Meterologist Nick Allard said there was a good chance of 70-degree weather Friday but temperatures could fall on Saturday, starting in the Coastal Range.
Current Conditions
For Portland, Allard predicted that "cooler air will hold off until tomorrow night for the metro area, so inland folks get a bonus day out of all this."
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The Vernal Equinox officially begins Saturday, March 20, at 10:34 a.m. PDT and astronomers at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in SE Portland offered a few fun facts to mark the occasion.
-- On the first day of spring, the Sun rises exactly due east and sets exactly due west.
-- Each successive day thereafter it rises and sets just a little bit farther to the north until the summer solstice on June 20, the first day of summer, when the Sun reaches its northernmost point along the horizon and actually seems to 'stand still' and rise and set in the same place for a few days.
-- The word 'solstice' means 'sun stands still'.
-- As the season changes from summer to winter and vice versa, the Sun and Moon are in perfect balance, as if they were on opposite ends of a "celestial see-saw".
-- The Earth's ongoing precession, or wobble, affects what time of day the equinox occurs and how the stars are alligned at such times.
