James Jones

Windy and dumping rain here, and just heard a transformer blow. The first system of the fall is always fun.

That September 1974 heatwave has to be on the short list of most anomalous non June 2021 heatwaves on record here. 6 straight 90+ at PDX, 7 at SLE, 8 at EUG (including 14 straight at 85+) is pretty bonkers for late September.

Sprinkling outside! It's not adding up to much but it's nice to hear the sound of raindrops. The rain landing on my hands is dark grey/brown from the smoke, pretty gross but it's good the air is getting some cleaning.

If we're lucky we'll get a repeat of September 1991 followed by October 1987 so we can have an 8 month stretch of truly desertlike weather!

Just realized this was the 83rd consecutive day of 70+ highs at PDX, breaking the old record of 80 in 1967. At this point it's safe to say the record will get pushed to at least 90 days, barring a big change in the models or a day of choking smoke. On the dry front PDX is at 3.82" of rain in the last 189 days with things looking still looking bone dry for the foreseeable future. The fall storm season can't come soon enough. Edit: on further review the record of 70+ is actually 90 consecutive all the way back in 2017. Good chance we break it anyway.

16 years to the day after Katrina is a bit of cruel irony. I don't know anything about their infrastructure situation but you would hope they learned from Katrina and are much better prepared than in 2005.

Had an actual light rain shower here for about 45 seconds. Not measurable but I'll take it.

The October 2003 cold snap led to some good things later on. 03-04 is an underrated winter for the Portland area, I was 12 at the time and it was the first major winter event I experienced as a weather weenie. I have vague memories of the January 1998 event but for a kid that 6 year gap was an eternity. Nice to see a legitimately cold morning here. Not to sound like Jim but I think we might be done with the anomalous ridging for the season, though I wouldn't be surprised if we get a few more 90 degree days scattered here and there.

Looking like we're in for a fantastic stretch of late summer weather. Yesterday was pretty much perfect here. Looks like a lot of places will actually avoid a record warm August.

Pretty comical the Euro is showing another bout of triple digits for the Willamette Valley late in the run. A 2013 type of September would be an absolute godsend but my gut feeling is another dry and ridgy month. We've gotten kind of lucky with generally averageish Septembers in recent years, though 2020 would have been record warm if not for the smoke inversion episode. I'm wondering if this is our version of a 1930s dust bowl year. It's been crazy, unprecedently dry which is no doubt contributing to the heat this year - as Dewey pointed out in a normal year you would not have expected yesterday to have widespread highs of 102-104 in the WV with these 850s and no downsloping. The climate projections I've seen don't seem to show decreasing spring rainfall for the PNW so I'm hoping this was a fluke year that wasn't made more likely because of climate change. PDX having just 3.80" of rain in the last 5 and a half months is absolutely bonkers.

Still looks pretty dense over northern California and southern Oregon. The Canadian smoke model also looks pretty gross at the end of the run.

January is probably pretty jealous right now watching these +PNA records being set in August. We're due for a modern suckfest to finally unseat January 1953 as the warmest on record anyway, though a constant SW flow deluge may not be the worst thing in the world after this spring and summer.

Disappointingly muted signal. The scenario I'm really hoping we avoid is a shot of cool and dry air dropping into Montana and giving us warm offshore flow with very low humidity which a few model runs have hinted at as a possibility. I found it pretty hilarious when Jim was celebrating a run that showed that, it was as if the wildfires had become sentient.

We need your Euro ensemble maps. I'm starting to feel cautiously optimistic we'll see a solid trough next week.

I'm old enough to remember your call for a cool June...