Morning milky rain stumps weather watchers

COEUR d'ALENE - A milky rain that fell over most of the region during the morning commute on Friday has weather watchers stumped.

"We really don't know what it was," said Mark Turner, observing program leader at the National Weather Service in Spokane. "We don't really have a hypothesis either."

Turner said the weather service is looking into it and trying to find someone that can help them understand what caused the muddy mess.

He said they have looked at all of the recent volcanic activity, but with the weather patterns that are over this region, volcanic ash doesn't appear to be the likely culprit.

"Volcanic activity really doesn't make sense," he said. "But that is not to say that it couldn't have happened."

Turner said there were some fairly strong winds in the Columbia Basin, where there hasn't been much precipitation lately.

"Those strong winds could have picked up some dust," he said, but it would have had to go high into the atmosphere to fall as rain.

Still, he said, that is just speculation at this point.

"We are still waiting for someone to help us out on this one," he said.