Yeah, the thing about 2022 is that it felt like we really were just riding out an unsustainable wave of two-sigma troughing parked over us for those two months from mid April to mid June. Living on borrowed time, and it was inevitable that it would break down and flip. This year has been different in that we're at least still getting some ridging interludes in the midst of what has largely been a seasonal and progressive spring for us. Seeing us weather those ridging patterns without going completely off the rails has been encouraging and harkens back to the traditions of our climo. But it's still way early.

I keep wanting to believe, but then I’m reminded of how 2022 was seemingly off to arguably a better start than this warm season. Then the heat kicked in and we never looked back until October. I think eventually we will get some type of historically average or even slightly cool summer. Maybe this year…or maybe not.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10003493/

Getting through one of these intra-seasonal, MJO wave assisted ridging interludes without record heat is a definite win for this decade. And prematurely, would maybe be another subtle sign that things are indeed pointing away from a super hellish summer.

I was curious how strongly this is the case, so I looked at PDX's average rainfall stats. For the first 10 days of the month, the daily average is .07". For the middle 10 days, it's .05". For the last 10 days, it's .04". So essentially a 42% decrease in average rainfall from the first third of the month to the last third.