Summer’s Last Hurrah?

Good morning everybody! Apologies for the delay in forecasts, blog posts, and pictures recently!

Today and Friday may very well be “Summer’s Last Hurrah.” Sure, we might have a few small “yays” in September, but these two days look like they’ll be the hottest days for the next nine months.

We’ve got a thermal trough off the West Coast extending northward from the Central Valley of California all the way to Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands). With lower pressure offshore and higher pressure inland, we are getting warm, offshore flow throughout the Pacific Northwest. Expect highs on either side of 90 for much of Western Washington today, with slightly warmer temperatures for the foothills and Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Even the coast should hit the 80s today, with a few locations susceptible to offshore flow (like Quillayute) approaching 90.

On Friday, Puget Sound and the I-5 corridor will warm even more, while the coast will cool to the low 80s. Friday evening into Saturday morning, our big marine push of cool air comes in to Western Washington, and Saturday’s highs will be 15-20 degrees cooler than Friday’s for many parts of the region.

This onshore push will usher in a new pattern, causing the large ridge of high pressure over the Eastern Pacific that has kept us warm and dry to retrograde further west, opening up the door for systems to slide in from the northwest. If it were winter, we could be talking about heavy mountain snows and “lumpy rain” here in the lowlands, but alas, it is still summer.

Still, change is in the air, and I’d be surprised if we saw any more 90s for the rest of 2016.

BTW, with all this warm weather, the perch and bass in Lake Washington are becoming more active and are getting bigger. Though our local fish are contaminated with PCBs, they also are an excellent source of Omega 3s, and are a blast to catch and eat.

Thanks for reading! Enjoy the heat!

Charlie