The first round of rough weather hit the area Monday evening with high winds and rain and cold weather is forecast to be on the way.

The Monday storm knocked power out in parts of Covington, Maple Valley, Black Diamond and the surrounding area. The National Weather Service reported wind gusts of 49 mph.

Outages included the Timberlane development in Covington and parts of Maple Valley.

The Tahoma School District closed Tuesday because of the power outage.

The winds blew trees down and dropped limbs and debris on the highways.

The Auburn-Black Diamond Road was closed for a time Monday night and Tuesday morning when sparks from a power line started a fire in nearby trees.

The weather service is forecasting temperatures will drop this weekend, beginning Friday, (today), and continuing into next week.

Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, said although there has been talk of snow this weekend, forecasting snow in the Puget Sound region is difficult at best.

“We are going to turn colder by the end of the week,” Mass said. “But forecasting both temperature and precipitation and the amount of precipitation is not easy.”

Mass said the problem with forecasts in the region is, “We don’t have a lot of experience forecasting it. It’s easy say it is going to be wet and warm or cold and dry, but cold and wet takes some doing.”

According to Mass, the predictions of a severe winter ahead for the region comes from a La Niña pattern developing.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website described a La Niña as, “unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, compared to El Niño, which is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific.”

Mass said the La Niña pattern developing is the “strongest since 1955.”

The pattern is expected to bring colder weather and more snow after Jan. 1, but Mass said a La Niña pattern is a “correlation, not a predication. Some La Niñas have no snow.”

Mass posts weather articles on his blog at cliffmass.blogspot.com.