Inland Northwest Hay Weather

Our cooler weather the past couple of days isn’t due to a change in the weather pattern, but rather due to the wildfire smoke blocking some of the suns rays. Here’s a morning satellite picture, showing the thick smoke over eastern Washington and the slowly approaching clouds over southwest Washington.  Thankfully, our changing weather pattern will also push the smoke out of our area. Here’s a computer depiction of the smoke on Saturday morning.  And here’s what that computer predicts things will look like by Monday morning.  And as our weather pattern changes, we’ll say goodbye to the unusual late summer heat wave, and welcome in highs in the 70s, which is actually what we should be at for this time of year.  But when will the rain arrive and how much will we get?  Our first chance of rain will be Saturday night and Sunday.  This is a very low probability event, which is common with the first wave after a dry spell.  Sprinkles for most, although a few ...

There were a couple of interesting articles in the Spokane news recently.  First, residents along parts of the Spokane River have noted that the river is actually going dry in some spots between Post Falls and downtown Spokane.  Here's a link to the Spokesman Review article .  This article does a nice job of listing a number of factors, including water management, heat, evaporation, drought, and the increased use of the Spokane aquifer, in part due to population increase. A few days later, there was another article pointing out that Spokane officially had it's driest summer (defined as June-August) ever (records began in 1881).  Here's a table of the 20 driest summers in Spokane. There's an interesting fact in this table.  Did you spot it?  Notice how many of the driest summers have occurred since 2000?  8 of the 20 driest summers have occurred in the last 25 years.   Here's a graph showing the summer precipitation for each year at Spokane....

We're currently in the middle of a rather unusual heat wave at the end of summer.  And some records could still be reached.  For those who aren't a fan of the heat, there's good news:  an end to the heat wave is in sight. Here's the somewhat odd weather map.  There's a skinny but strong area of high pressure over the Western US that extends up into BC and the Alaskan Panhandle. A weak low off the Washington coast is sending waves of moisture into our area at times.  This caused all of the clouds last night along with a few showers and thunderstorms.   Meanwhile, the eastern US is still experiencing fall-like temperatures.  Low temperatures in the 40s dipped all the way south into North Carolina this morning.  State College, PA has already had 3 nights in the 30s. By Thursday of this week, the weather pattern won't have changed a whole lot.  Another surge of cool air invades the Great Lakes region, while high pressure continues to dominat...

In my last blog I mentioned a couple of things worth repeating: 1) there was no guarantee that we would see cooling by the weekend, and 2) there’s never been a 100F reading at Spokane Airport in September. Well, the computers are coming into better agreement on #1, and that could have implications on #2. First, let’s revisit the current weather map. Strong high pressure dominates the western coast of North America while a deep cool low pressure is giving the eastern US early fall weather.  What isn’t so obvious is that there’s actually a very minor low pressure disturbance over Oregon that will affect our weather.  Let’s look at a satellite image to see what I’m talking about. It’s actually made up of three circulations.  Rather complex, but also rather weak. They will very slowly move northward over the next few days, bringing with them a lot of clouds and moisture.  This is going to affect our weather in several ways.  The first is that we will see some gradua...

As I said in an earlier blog, on average the hottest time of the year in the Inland Northwest is the last week of July and the first week of August. But of course, averages are just that: averages.  A month ago it looked like this summer would hold true to form, with Deer Park airport hitting 99F on July 30th.  But it now looks like the traditional end of summer may be the hottest week.  The computers initially were focused on a hot weekend, with a gradual cooling after Monday (the 25th). But it now looks like 90s may prevail all next week. The culprit is of course, strong high pressure. Here’s the forecast weather map for Friday, courtesy of Tropical Tidbits.  I won’t bore you, but the weather maps for all next week look pretty similar. It’s not until the end of next week that we may see some relief from the heat, just in time for Labor Day weekend. But that’s not guaranteed.  With this kind of hot pattern, afternoon mountain thunderstorms will be a possibility...

If you woke up this (Thursday) morning, feeling like it was fall, you weren’t alone. Having fog and low clouds in early August is a rare treat. But don’t despair. Summer will make a reappearance by this weekend. But first, we have one last round of showers and thunderstorms this afternoon. Here is what one computer model thinks the radar will look like at 2pm this afternoon.  These showers and storms should move to the southeast, affecting the Spokane area by late in the day.  The next couple of mornings will be rather chilly, with lows in the lower to mid 40s.  Open the windows in the evening and see how cold you can get the indoor temperature. On today’s weather map below you can see the culprit of this latest rain, with a decent low pressure system over the  Northwest moving into the northern Rockies. But you can also see an area of high pressure developing off the coast of the PacNW. This trend will continue, so that by the end of the weekend, the weather map sho...