Warmer temperatures and sun are expected to return this weekend, bringing some relief to Whatcom County residents so weary of cloudy, cold days that they’ve taken to calling the month “Juneuary.”

But a little over a week from the start of summer — in the midst of unseasonably cold weather that dumped more snow in the mountain passes and caused a freak blizzard on Mount Rainier that killed one hiker on Tuesday — meteorologists are saying that moody Mother Nature will continue to give Western Washington the cold shoulder.

“It looks to be a cool summer right now,” says Dennis D’Amico, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Seattle.

That means hikers will have to wait longer for mountain trails at higher elevations to melt out, and they’ll have to keep a wary watch on snowmelt-swollen streams well past the usual window for such things.

“There’s a lot more snow sitting up there available to melt. Stream crossings will be higher and more dangerous through the summer,” says Gary Paull, wilderness and trails coordinator for Mount Baker- Snoqualmie National Forest.

But even with a cool summer in the forecasts, rangers remain concerned that another series of hot days like those during Memorial Day weekend could melt snowpack quickly and dump a huge amount of water into rivers.

That creates dangerous situations, especially for inexperienced paddlers and tubers who could be surprised by high river levels and fast water, even in normally flat waters like the Stillaguamish and the lower Nisqually rivers.

“We’re lucky, in a sense, that we only had a couple off days of hot weather,” says Phil Kincare, river programs assistant for Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

When that happened on Memorial Day weekend, the Nooksack was among the rivers where snowmelt flowed into them so quickly that the water rose high and ran fast. That prompted Ski to Sea officials to cancel the canoe leg of the race.

Since then, the river level has dropped back down to more normal levels, says Eric Mickelson, a Bellingham whitewater kayaker who paddles the Nooksack.

Until recently, whitewater kayakers have been staying away from stretches of the river because the level has been too high for comfort, or they’ve been paddling easier stretches.

Mickelson hopes the snowpack continues to melt at a slow, steady pace so whitewater kayakers can enjoy a longer paddling season. “We’re hoping it will stay like this and not melt off too fast,” he says.

Meanwhile, he warns less-experienced paddlers to use caution.

“The biggest safety thing they can do is just knowing what you’re getting into and not jumping in on something that’s too hard, especially if the water is too high,” says Mickelson, who is a member of Bellingham Whitewater.

While there’s plenty of snow out there still, the Mount Baker snowpack isn’t much higher than normal and is well below the record year of 1999, according to Paull, because the storms that blew in this winter and spring spent themselves down south.

He says there is more snow south at the same elevation than there is up here.

Still, use caution when heading into Mount Baker- Snoqualmie National Forest and North Cascades National Park. Rosemary Seifried, a park ranger for North Cascades, says the snow levels are lower this time of the year than normal. People are encountering snow at 3,500 feet to 5,000 feet, she says, even lower in some places.

And with warm weather forecast for this weekend, she expects creeks to run high, even those that are usually little and easy to cross later in summer.

Meanwhile, hikers heading out and up will likely see snow for a while, Paull says, because it’s been slow melting.

“We’re like two months, almost, behind,” he says. “People can expect to see snow a lot later in the year, particularly at mid-elevation.”