James Jones

Eugene only hit 93 the day Salem hit 117, Portland 116, and Seattle 108 because the southerly surge was already in progress. The last couple days were very close to being as anomalous as June 2021, and as others have mentioned the setup was very similar with the highest heights of the rex block being just to our north/northeast. It reminds me a bit of March 2012 for the Midwest in terms of how unprecedented this month as been for the region, though our climate isn't capable of the level of anomalies the Midwest and East can see during the cold season. The average high at PDX so far this month is an absurd 81.3, warmer than the average high for August with the old 1981-2010 normals. No other October in the last ~150 years has come even close.

88 at Aurora at 12:53 on 10/15 is off the charts absurd.

Latest 87 degree high on record for PDX, breaking the daily record high by 5 degrees. That was without any surfacing east wind either. At least the models are hinting that we'll finally enter a more typical rainy pattern in the last week to 10 days of the month.

Yeah, looks nasty on the ground from pictures I've seen. We've been very lucky in the Portland area to have only had a few days with particularly bad smoke.

The Euro shows us briefly getting clipped by that system before igniting another round of warm offshore flow. Sounds about right. Fire danger could be pretty high with that, something that feels bizarre to talk about since it will be nearly mid October by then.

Crazy stat: PDX has seen 100 consecutive days with a high of 70 or greater, beating the record of 96 set last year, which beat the record of 92 set in 2017. Seven of the top eight 70+ streaks have been set since 2012. Decent chance of a sub 70 high today or tomorrow, but if not the streak could get truly absurd (if it isn't already).

Gonna be really disappointing if we go through this troughy pattern without meaningful regionwide rain. Another smokefest is probably on the way late month late month if the next week ends up dry.

That's one absurdly thick smoke plume. The sky is milky white up here but we're lucky compared to most of the region.

Predicting a hot summer these days is about as difficult as predicting a predominately cloudy December. Best to expect it to be hot until the atmosphere proves otherwise.

Looks like this summer has already tied the PDX record for days of 98+ at 7, which will probably be broken tomorrow. We also are at 11 days of 95+, the record being 14 in 2015. The first front of fall is going to be soooo nice. I'm hoping September ends up okay like we've seen in a lot of recent years, but right now my feeling is that this could be one of those years where summer drags on into October.

Those buildings and asphalt look awfully close to the sensor. Encroaching UHI...

Holy , that's insane. I would imagine it's gotta be up there for biggest hail ever in the PNW lowands. A humid 76 with light rain here. Very tropical feeling.

And 11 in the last three years, which is the most Portland has ever seen in a 3 year stretch with the old record being 9. 100 degree days per decade at PDX: 40s: 12 50s: 2 60s: 7 70s: 15 80s: 15 90s: 12 00s: 15 10s: 11 20s: 11 so far The number of 90 degree days has been trending up significantly but up until now the number of extreme 100+ days has been pretty constant for the last 50 years, though that may be changing. I don't know what the guy's deal is but he's basically a straight up climate change denier at this point. Several years back I remember him making a blog post about how our fire seasons haven't been changing in length, and his "evidence" was to show March-April-May temperature and precip trends hadn't changed much over the last century. That was when I stopped reading his blog entirely.

Looks like there's a new fire near Silverton.

This is how I've been thinking of it. PDX's average highs since 2013 demonstrate this well, the late July through late August period shows a distinct spike (as well as late June, but that may be more happenstance).

At least September has been reasonable. Really haven't had a torch since 2014, though 2020 probably would've been if not for the smokeversion.

Models look absolutely awful today. Smokefest should start up pretty soon if they're close to correct. Incredible how all the models delayed and watered down the trough so drastically just 3-4 days out. Obviously these wandering ULLs are hard for the models to handle but it's still pretty remarkable.

It's true we're unlikely to see historically cool summers anymore, even something like 2011 seems like it would be really tough to pull off these days. My point was more that we haven't really seen any ENSO signal in the last decade around our elevated baseline summer temps.

We talked about this a couple weeks ago but ENSO state hasn't seemed to make any difference for our summer weather in the last decade. Last summer was also a Nina and it torched, and 2019 was a Nino (albeit weak) and was our coolest summer since 2012. And as Jesse pointed out winter '18-'19 was a very strange progression for a Nino. Weird stuff. I also saw this tweet from wxstatman:

Hillsboro up to a 70 degree dewpoint. I know the humidity got pretty ridiculous up north last June but I'm not sure if any WV stations saw 70 degree dewpoints with that.

Pretty muggy out there already, PDX is at a 63 degree dewpoint. Wasn't expecting that already. Nice to see the end of the heatwave coming into view now, maybe we can break Justin's midsummer troughing curse! The only fly in the ointment is the Euro operational runs stubbornly showing a later end to this than everything else.

If it's going to be hot it would be nice if we could at least tap into some monsoonal moisture at some point. I don't even remember the last time we had a decent summer thunderstorm outbreak. Right now it's looking like this could be a painfully dull extended stretch of low end heat with a few days of ~100 (for the WV).

I've seen some mets on twitter and other forums talk about how ENSO forcing and other teleconnections aren't producing traditional outcomes as reliably as they used to. No idea if that's confirmation bias or what, but you're definitely not the only one to make that observation.

And the record for consecutive 100+ was all the way back in 1941. Really hoping we don't match that one. I'm hoping the cool and wet spring will help the vegetation, though if mega heatwaves start to become a near annual occurrence it could get ugly.

The setup is somewhat different but a July 2009 type of outcome seems like a decent bet. Long duration heat event with a few days in the mid 100s.