Wednesday, July 20, 2016
11:12 am
Gooooood morning!
A thin layer of stratocumulus clouds was covering much of Western Washing early this morning, but it was much thinner than the layers we have seen over the past couple days. As a result, many of the clouds have already burnt off, and there are crystal-clear bluebird skies in the Seattle metropolitan area as of 11:03 am. Highs should reach the mid 70s today, and although there is an outside chance of a shower over the mountains, we should stay dry today.
In the Pacific Northwest summer, we can usually thank a large, consistent area of high pressure over the northeast Pacific for our dry conditions. Right now, however, we are actually being more effectively dried by a massive ridge of high pressure well to our east over the Great Plains. 16 states are currently under heat alerts of some type!
After a weak trough Thursday with a chance of showers (especially with a possible Puget Sound Convergence Zone Thursday night), we dry out on Friday, though we will have a cloudy start to the day. We slowly warm up, dry out, and become sunnier over the weekend, and as the extended forecast below shows, the “ensemble mean” of all the GFS model members shows temperatures above normal for this time of the year next week and beyond!
Summer may have gotten a late start, but better late than never!
