Cold, dry conditions to continue across Portland next week

The latest: "Here in the Pacific Northwest, we tend to be very wet in the winter, and so having no rain for over a week is pretty unusual," Noah Alviz, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland, told Axios.

• Plus: Because there are no clouds in the sky, any heat that accumulates during the day quickly escapes into the atmosphere at night — known as radiational cooling — causing temperatures to drop and stay low.
• These conditions often cause dense fog and stagnant air, too.

Zoom out: It's a sharp contrast to what the rest of the country is seeing in terms of historic snowstorms and below-freezing temperatures, where a low-pressure trough is bringing in Arctic air from Canada.

Context: We are in a weak La Niña winter — when ocean temperatures are cooler than normal and can alter weather patterns. Usually, it brings wetter- and colder-than-normal conditions, but it can also be a "mixed bag," according to Alviz.

• For example, the driest January on record for Portland International Airport was in 1985 — also a weak La Niña year — where only 0.06 inches of precipitation was recorded, Alviz said.

Threat level: While the lack of precipitation is not actively adding to the state's snowpack, low temperatures are keeping what is on the ground intact, albeit a bit hard and icy.

• Yes, but: We will need another long, wet period, like we saw this past fall, from February through April "to keep drought off the table for this summer," state climatologist Larry O'Neill told Axios in an email.
• If the dry spell continues into the spring, much of the state could experience some form of drought, he added.

What we're watching: The high-pressure ridge could break early next month, the forecasters said — around the same time we'll have precipitation totals for January.