August 2022 PNW Observations and Discussion - 1956 Redux!1!!1!

[Meatyorologist]

The first signs of the changing seasons are upon us!

SPV beginning to reorganize. Wavelengths are decreasing. Sun angles are lowering, days shortening, all at accelerating rates. Around two to three weeks from now, 90F+ heatwaves start becoming exceptionally more rare at KSEA.

But first... One more full month of summer to get through. Will we see more extended heat? Maybe more August records to fall? Or will summer wind to a close early, and perhaps we take a shot at some genuinely cool August weather?

Will there be exceptional rainfall, or drought? Do we see a lightning outbreak, or god forbid another windstorm 2015-style? Only time will tell all of this.

[Mr Marine Layer]

There are a few 1's in the title. 

[snow_wizard]

I'm guessing warm and dry overall, but with a couple of cool shots from the N to NW.  High chance of a clipper with low dps and dry winds later on.

[DareDuck]

Last month of summer!

[MossMan]

6 minutes ago, DareDuck said:

Last month of summer!

Summer is way too short. 

[Deweydog]

Summer 2023 starts in less than 10 months 45 minutes from now.

[snow_wizard]

10 minutes ago, DareDuck said:

Last month of summer!

September can be a lot better than summer though.  Those first really crisp nights and enjoyable temps.

[Cascadia_Wx]

49 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I'm guessing warm and dry overall, but with a couple of cool shots from the N to NW.  High chance of a clipper with low dps and dry winds later on.

So basically half the region is going to burn down again late in the month? Sounds great!

[Cascadia_Wx]

00z Euro shows that little sh*t stain of a cutoff low finally moving onshore a week from tomorrow. Probably still too soon.

[snow_wizard]

3 minutes ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

00z Euro shows that little sh*t stain of a cutoff low finally moving onshore a week from tomorrow. Probably still too soon.

You and I are on the same page with that f...ing cutoff low.

The good news is we get a decent cool shot on Thursday and a chance of a pretty crisp min on Friday.  40s would feel like heaven after this. 

[Cascadia_Wx]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

You and I are on the same page with that f...ing cutoff low.

The good news is we get a decent cool shot on Thursday and a chance of a pretty crisp min on Friday.  40s would feel like heaven after this. 

It’s easy to blame, but honestly it’s more of a symptom than a cause. And I highly doubt anywhere where most people live sees 40s next week. Something below 60 would feel unbelievably chilly at this point.

[snow_wizard]

The ECMWF is far from terrible.  Some nice chances for decently cool nights and no real heat.

[Cascadia_Wx]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

The ECMWF is far from terrible.  Some nice chances for decently cool nights and no real heat.

Upper 90s down here for next Saturday and Sunday

[snow_wizard]

2 minutes ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

It’s easy to blame, but honestly it’s more of a symptom than a cause. And I highly doubt anywhere where most people live sees 40s next week. Something below 60 would feel unbelievably chilly at this point.

We'll see.  The GFS and ECMWF both show clear Thursday night with a cool air mass over us.  Hard to believe in August, but who knows.

[Deweydog]

[snow_wizard]

1 minute ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Upper 90s down here for next Saturday and Sunday

Well...it only has one day that I would call hot up here.  Pretty good overall.

[snow_wizard]

Shelton 61 with WSW winds gusting to 21!

[Deweydog]

Those dew points on the east side yesterday were pretty interesting…

[snow_wizard]

4 minutes ago, Deweydog said:

Those dew points on the east side yesterday were pretty interesting…

Looks like it dropped to 17 in Spokane.  That would sure dry things out fast with 102 degrees at the time.  Even here I had a brief drop to 40 on the dp today.  I thought my weather station might be acting up given the dps at the major stations, but apparently some dry air was in the picture that could have mixed down.

[snow_wizard]

I truly think we are going have some fun times over the next 6 months.

[NWbyNW]

[NWbyNW]

As mentioned in my earlier wildfire/smoke update post, models do show lower level smoke making it's way through much of western Oregon, and eastern Oregon.  We can only hope it blows east, but who knows exactly what will happen.  It is likely the Portland metro will be good for a few days, but the possibility of some high aloft smoke isn't out of the question.  

Washington looks pretty smoke free on all models I've looked at, at least nothing low to the ground.

But models can totally be wrong, they are just ... models... estimates... guesses....

[TacomaWx]

72 here but marine air is on the move…slowly though. 

[Deweydog]

4 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Looks like it dropped to 17 in Spokane.  That would sure dry things out fast with 102 degrees at the time.  Even here I had a brief drop to 40 on the dp today.  I thought my weather station might be acting up given the dps at the major stations, but apparently some dry air was in the picture that could have mixed down.

Omak at one point had a 104/12 spread which is insane up here. Even more bizarre considering some west side spots pretty much maxed out climo for dew point 36 hours earlier.

[NWbyNW]

I wonder what changes there will be after that heat blast.  All things considered, the PNW looks pretty decent here still. 

[TacomaWx]

Not bad for early august. Would be nice to get some rain has been almost a month. 

[TacomaWx]

Sunday looks like it has 90ish potential here…it’s a warm run overall but there’s some cool days mixed in too. Much better than what we’ve seen. One unfortunate thing is with the west wind kicking in that’ll mean quite a bit of wind on the east slopes of the cascades. Could be a nasty fire situation.

[TacomaWx]

Gfs not quite as enthusiastic about precip as the cmc and euro are in western WA this week. CMC gets wet again with that system later in the run. 

[smerfylicious]

Just to recap my area:

7/24 - 90/52

7/25 - 95/56

7/26 - 101/58

7/27 - 98/61

7/28 - 99/60

7/29 - 99/61

7/30 - 102/61

7/31 - 101/56

Gotta love valley life. What a run. Still, not nearly as miserable as the last year. The worst part of last year's heat blast were the 3 days that didn't get below 70 at night.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

71F and getting more comfortable. Needs to drop another 2F for me to consider the temperature to be nice.

[Cloud]

Closed out July and this 90s stretch with a 95/65 for SEA. 93/65 for BFI.

What an incredible stretch. 

 

[Cloud]

SEA broke 2 records yesterday. 
6 straight days of 90+
95 was new record daily maximum (94-2015) for July 31. 

[snow_wizard]

The power of SW wind onshore to cool things off is amazing.  SEA plunged from 77 to 68 in a little over an hour.

EDIT:  It took 50 minutes.

[snow_wizard]

43 minutes ago, smerfylicious said:

Just to recap my area:

7/24 - 90/52

7/25 - 95/56

7/26 - 101/58

7/27 - 98/61

7/28 - 99/60

7/29 - 99/61

7/30 - 102/61

7/31 - 101/56

Gotta love valley life. What a run. Still, not nearly as miserable as the last year. The worst part of last year's heat blast were the 3 days that didn't get below 70 at night.

The duration of this one was pretty wearing though.

[Cloud]

6 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

The power of SW wind onshore to cool things off is amazing.  SEA plunged from 77 to 68 in a little over an hour.

EDIT:  It took 50 minutes.

The chart illustrating the drop off is a thing of beauty. I was sitting outside around midnight and by 1am I could feel the cooler air blowing in. Very comfortable! 

[smerfylicious]

4 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

The duration of this one was pretty wearing though.

My house was a consistent 68-70 degrees. I cooked up steaks and all sorts of goodies on my natural gas stove. Other than my basil looking very sad, and my 2 year old wanting to go outside...eh could've been worse. If I didn't have the ability to cool the house, or if I was still in my old apartment that banned AC...well that'd be another story

[Cloud]

SEA’s down to 66…. Which is about the same for last couple nights as morning lows right before sunrise. Quite a plunge in the last hour or so. 

[snow_wizard]

Hopefully the marine layer will overperform tomorrow, and we come in below model projections.  Seems like that happened a bit before the heatwave.

[Cloud]

2 minutes ago, smerfylicious said:

My house was a consistent 68-70 degrees. I cooked up steaks and all sorts of goodies on my natural gas stove. Other than my basil looking very sad, and my 2 year old wanting to go outside...eh could've been worse. If I didn't have the ability to cool the house, or if I was still in my old apartment that banned AC...well that'd be another story

Feels good to be part of the 44% right?!

 

[snow_wizard]

2 minutes ago, smerfylicious said:

My house was a consistent 68-70 degrees. I cooked up steaks and all sorts of goodies on my natural gas stove. Other than my basil looking very sad, and my 2 year old wanting to go outside...eh could've been worse. If I didn't have the ability to cool the house, or if I was still in my old apartment that banned AC...well that'd be another story

Banned AC?  Yikes!  At least I have a portable unit that kept things from getting totally unbearable.  Still a nasty week though.

[snow_wizard]

3 minutes ago, Cloud said:

SEA’s down to 66…. Which is about the same for last couple nights as morning lows right before sunrise. Quite a plunge in the last hour or so. 

Impressive drop for sure.

[smerfylicious]

12 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Banned AC?  Yikes!  At least I have a portable unit that kept things from getting totally unbearable.  Still a nasty week though.

Yup. I don't really understand because their rationale was "it looks tacky", but the apartments themselves looked run down and tacky.

I don't envy anyone that didn't have AC this week. It was definitely needed.

[Cloud]

35 minutes ago, smerfylicious said:

Yup. I don't really understand because their rationale was "it looks tacky", but the apartments themselves looked run down and tacky.

I don't envy anyone that didn't have AC this week. It was definitely needed.

Looking "tacky" is only part of the reason but typically, there is a bigger reason behind it. Was utilities included as part of the lease? If so, then there's your main reason. Landlords that pays the utilities bills don't want their tenants running a bunch of A/Cs that'll substantially add to the cost of utilities. 

[Doinko]

5 hours ago, Frontal Snowsquall said:

The KPTV forecast fire smoke forecast keeps the smoke east of the Cascades. I hope it's correct.

Yeah there probably won't be much ground level smoke in our area thankfully, most of it is aloft.

[TT-SEA]

@Phil There is a brisk NW wind blowing here in northern MN this morning under sunny skies and it will only get to the mid 70s today.    What's the deal?  Thought would we would all be dead from heat exhaustion by now.     Looks pretty nice this week.  

[smerfylicious]

Someone left the faucet on in Seattle. It raining

[Joshua Lake Oswego]

Phoenix total high temp past 7 days = 698

Portland total high temp past 7 days = 693

Lovely summer so far…

[Doinko]

5 minutes ago, Joshua Lake Oswego said:

Phoenix total high temp past 7 days = 698

Portland total high temp past 7 days = 693

Lovely summer so far…

Salem's total high temp for the past 7 days is 704, even hotter than Phoenix

[seattleweatherguy]

Rain here 20 mins ago

[Omegaraptor]

3 minutes ago, Doiinko said:

Salem's total high temp for the past 7 days is 704, even hotter than Phoenix

Salem got five 100+ days in July. The 100 on 7/11 under a pretty pedestrian airmass with above average soil moisture is still pretty impressive.