Friday, March 16, 2012 Is it winter's last gasp More storms expected

Expect to see more rain and cool weather for the foreseeable future.

South Sounders might even see a few more snowflakes overnight.

The South Sound, which was battered by rain and wind gusts Monday, will get a slight reprieve from showers today before another storm front moves over the region Wednesday.

The rainy conditions will continue through the end of the week.

“It’s going to be pretty cool for this time of year,” said Gary Schneider, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Seattle.

Snow could mix with the rain during the overnight hours, but the flakes are not expected to stick around or cause problems, he said.

“(There are) definitely no big snow events on the horizon,” Schneider said. “It will be these hit-and-miss nuisance-type things.”

On Monday, strong wind gusts knocked out power to thousands in Pierce, Thurston and Whatcom counties. Gusts topped out at 44 miles per hour at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Wind speed mph ranged from the 30s to low 40s elsewhere in the South Sound.

Puget Sound Energy and Peninsula Light Co. crews spent the morning restoring electricity to customers in Bonney Lake, Lakewood, Olympia, Lakebay, Rainier, Tenino and Yelm, among other areas.

A handful of schools in Thurston County had no electricity or partial electricity for part of the day.

Yelm Community Schools dismissed students early because of outages.