James Jones

The torch summers of 2015 and 2018 ended with semi decent Septembers, below normal for most of Oregon and Washington. PDX managed a 60/49 day on 9/6/15.

Ah, yes. You, the guy with 26,000 posts about a region he doesn't even live in, doesn't take it seriously at all. Very good point. Even stranger is that people who live here care about stuff.

This is another example of why people get so annoyed with you, by completely misrepresenting other people. Andrew posts random observations from around the region more than pretty much anybody on the board.

1. So because you always cherry pick one station when it's convenient (you've been quite a bit more focused on SEA in recent days) it doesn't count as cherry picking this time? 2. Yeah, and many stations in the region are far ahead of the pace of torch summers like 2009, 2018, and even 2015 using those thresholds. 3. Yes, it was another example of cherry picking at its finest. Is it your goal to come off as the most disingenuous, goalpost shifting weasel humanly possible or something? I also love your tactic of smug, condescending "guess you missed this one contrarian, cherry picking post I made earlier". It's really endearing.

When you can't figure out a way to downplay it, just move on to pretending it doesn't count. Then cherry pick the coldest station in the region, come up with arbitrary thresholds for days above a certain temperature (that's still on pace to match the hottest summers on record), and make absolutely ******* sure to never mention anything happening south of Olympia.

Just to add on to this - It's been a full decade at this point since we've had an actual cool summer, and even that was nothing special by pre 21st century standards (especially if you include the blowtorch September). Even an average summer by 20th century standards would feel pretty remarkable at this point. Another stat that's amazing to me is that of the last 17 (soon to be 18) July/Augusts at PDX, only July 2016 had an average high below 80. The 1971-2000 average highs were 79.3 for July and 79.7 for August.

Flatiron says that's pretty much normal, especially if you pretend the greatest heatwave on record doesn't count.

Yeah there's been more of a north/south gradient than usual this summer (2013!). June 2021 was the warmest on record at PDX, SLE, and EUG but fell a bit short for the Puget Sound region. Even here in Portland we've been doing better compared to average than farther south in the Valley for July so far. 16 days of 90+ already in Salem and 14 in Eugene sure seems torchy...

Are there archived satellite loops anywhere? I feel like I remember somebody posting a link to one a few years back.

Come on Tim, this is just nihilism with a layer of Zen makeup. If we knew for months in advance that a 6 mile diameter meteor was headed towards us, would you say we shouldn't try to deflect it or break it up because it's natural and happened before 66 million years ago? And if you think we should try to do something in that scenario, why would it be any different for climate change and environmental degradation if we thought we could do something about it? Of course the planet will recover just fine in a relative geological blink almost no matter what do, but what most people care about is maintaining conditions to continue prosperous and healthy human civilization long into the future.

I think it has a bit more impact than you're giving it credit for, though of course it takes the right kind of pattern for it to matter. Presumably slightly colder water would chill the air over the water a bit more than usual, which is the source air for our shallow mesoscale driven marine pushes (like the ones we've seen the last several days). And a slightly sharper inversion (say 55 degree marine air vs. 57 degrees) would be a bit harder for the sun to mix out. And as Tim pointed out dewpoints would probably be effected by the water temp. This part is more speculative, but colder water might also increase the surface pressure gradient between the ocean and the lowlands a touch, making marine pushes slightly more vigorous.

I'm genuinely unsure if you're trying to troll me right now, so this seems like a good place to end this back and forth.

No, I read it. This is just downplaying with a bunch of "we don't know what the future holds" handwaving. Like I said, the most obvious stuff in the world without any real point. Also a little ironic you're telling me I'm too concerned with your motivations while simultaneously saying other people are too prisoner of the moment, no?

I just don't know what your point is with anything you've been posting. That the multi-decade trend of warming could potentially reverse itself in the future, backed with no evidence at all - a point so obvious that you could say that about literally any trend ever observed in history because of how time works (the future hasn't happened yet, therefore we can't be certain about what will occur)? Here's the facts about summers here: - They've seen an overall warming trend that goes back all the way to the beginning of observed records in the PNW starting in the 1800s - That trend has accelerated in the last 40ish years - There have been blips in that trend along the way, sometimes lasting for a decade+, see the 1950s - 2010 was a cooler and cloudier summer than 2009, then in the decade since then we've seen a bunch of even warmer and even sunnier summers - The marine layer has been much less prevalent since 2012, something clear even to casual observers living here The ad hominem is because it seems like your primary motivation with this is to try to downplay the warmth we've been seeing. If we had just seen the coldest December ever observed by Europeans that included the most intense cold snap ever recorded with subzero highs in places on the west side, followed by another week of cold but not record breaking conditions, I doubt you'd be reacting like this.

Looks like the marine layer didn't cease to exist entirely, which is what everybody was saying happened. There's still a big ocean to our west, which obviously nobody besides me was smart enough to account for. Also not every single day is into the 90s so this summer isn't very hot. I am very intelligent.

WOW. Sure has been a chilly summer and it looks to stay that way!

Luckily the Euro has been far more reasonable than the GFS the last day or two, I would much rather have that be the case than the other way around. Persistent warmth but no heatwave. It's been nice to have some marine clouds the last few days, and it looks like Oregon and Washington are mostly smoke free at the moment. It will inevitably return over us at some point but it's nice to see it put off as long as possible.

It's kind of annoying when a guy 2500 miles away keeps telling us for weeks about this phantom troughing coming up that hasn't materialized and isn't going to in the near future. We're the ones who actually have to live here and deal with this crappy heat, drought and wildfires. It's also amazing how out of whack people's idea of "cool" is after the heatwave, yesterday wasn't enough to drop any I5 corridor station down to normal. Even with the new normals the averages at PDX and SEA for July 1st are 78/56 and 74/55 respectively.

Pretty weird that 84/60 is now normal for late July and early August at PDX. Should be a lot easier to rack up cold anomalies though!!!!!

Thanks. And yeah, I would imagine there are a lot more examples before the airport era when we got cold past early February with much more regularity.

Yeah, but of course climo changes rapidly in February. Huge difference between the first few days of the month and even a week or two later.

It would be the 2nd latest sub 30 high on record for PDX, behind the 29 on 3/3/1960. Back to back subfreezing highs by this point in the season has also only happened once, in 1956. Also seems pretty rare to have a major ice storm by this point in the season, does anybody know of any examples of late season ice storms in the Portland area? Maybe BLI snowman?

97 with east winds at PDX. Goes to Jesse's point of this being a bit of a late summer/early fall type of heat setup, usually the downslope winds at this time of year don't quite reach the surface at the airport.

My gut feeling is that September is going to torch. Really haven't had a hot one since 2014, we're Dew(ey).