James Jones

Pretty disgusting. You have to imagine the smoke/wildfire situation would get really bad if it verified. Phil, is this the September heatwave you talked about, just occurring a bit earlier than you initially thought?

Pretty sure it's never happened. Even at PDX it's only happened 3 times - 1967, 2016, and 2017.

Smoke is gonna ruin our chance at the all time record again http://i.imgur.com/Gs0J4JG.jpg?1

PDX averaged 88.1 / 57.7 while downtown averaged 88.5 / 61.4. The UHI effect at the present day PDX is probably not as strong as the old downtown station but I think it's a decent approximation for what modern day PDX might have done in 1967. One difference is that 8/1967 had generally lower dewpoints than this one so that would help exaggerate the UHI effect.

The cooldown was definitely noticeable at home too, but not as dramatic. Maybe a 5-6 degree drop. Very warmest month on record-y look to the models today. Looks like you made a good call.

I don't think he's ever made a winter forecast that wasn't for a cold and snowy East.

Interesting. Are you calculating these numbers yourself? It would be cool to see the flip side for winter as well.

Can't really make a direct analogy to winter like that. Falls are short around here and springs are long. Mid February is well past our climatological peak of winter, whereas mid August is just barely past the peak of summer.

When even Tim is rooting for rain you know it's been a bit dry.

Really impressive considering the smoke. Probably would have tied the all-time record if not for that.

Pretty nasty out there.

Mark Nelsen: "Believe it or not the fire smoke has probably kept us a degree or two COOLER than we could have been. At 2pm I checked two different solar radiation sensors (Forest Grove & Corbett) and found they were seeing 5-8% less solar energy today compared to yesterday." So it almost certainly shaved a degree or two off of the high.

Pretty sure it's 5 in 1941 and 1977. Might be missing another year in there. Looking at the 12z reminds me of the 2010 Russian heatwave. That thing blew the doors off of any previous heatwave on record, and if the 12z verified August would be well on its way to do the same with any previous record warm month around here, though odds are strongly against it.

Definitely starting to look smokey on the Space Needle cam.

Huh, good information. I had no idea COOP stations worked like that back then. I always learn some interesting quirk like that from your posts. Those three consecutive readings in the 70s during December 1929 are for sure 100% bogus, so we know that station occasionally had problems.

I wonder if smoke could explain the difference between Salem and Portland during some of those 1920s-30s heatwaves. I always thought Salem's thermometer was a bit overexposed during that era, but now I'm wondering if Portland could have had smokey skies while Salem was clear on some of those days.

Only thing that can save us from your +7.8 August forecast.

Some sort of marine intrusion is pretty likely in the next 10 days (there's a reason we've only had 10 straight 90 days once, of course). Though I wouldn't trust the models to pick up on the precise timing of mesoscale details like that a full week out.

Not what I'm seeing. Still shows 850s at ~20c and surface temps in the mid to upper 90s all the way through hour 240.

Yuck. I'm hoping we luck out down here and avoid the smoke, though the entire region is probably going to be on fire this time next week.

I noticed that too. Pretty rare in the current UHI environment to see a summer month with a high 2 degrees above average combined with a below average low. Boring, but it was as pleasant as it gets.

It would give us a great start to the warmest August on record. Cuz you know, 2014 was a long time ago at this point and it's only our fourth consecutive blowtorch August.

6Z following suit with the Euro, extending the heatwave. Shows 4 straight 100+ days with 6 being possible.

91/60 97/62 104/66 108/70 102/70 95/65

It might rate well on the Dewey September Karma Index.