Inland Northwest Hay Weather

It was in the 90s on Monday, the 70s on Tuesday, and today it struggled to reach 60.  Quite a marked change.  After a fall-like weather system at the end of August, you may be wondering if summer is over. Traditionally, summer in the Inland NW is defined as 4th of July to Labor Day.   Here's the normal (brown shading) and extreme (red for highs, blue for lows) for Deer Park, WA throughout the year.  On average, the hottest days of the year span from 22 July - 6 August, when the average high temperature is 87F.  By the 2nd of September, the average high has dipped back down below 80F with an average low of 43F.  That similar to the normal temperatures for late June.  The big difference between late June and early September is the length of day.  For June 30, sunrise is at 454am and sunset is 852pm, for a day length of 16 hours.  By September 2nd, sunrise is 610am and sunset is 730pm, so the day length is now only 12 hours 20 minutes.  That's a big difference.   So back to our or

Just a short blog about upcoming rain for next week. Looking like very good chances starting late Monday night continuing into Wednesday.  Here’s the European model ensemble total rainfall.  This is a more traditional weather system so northeast Washington will get the most rain and the Basin will see the least amount. But the odds are high that everyone will get something  Spokane should see about  a quarter of an inch or more.  Deer Park may see 1/2” and further north should see more than that. The flow pattern is from the south so even the Basin shouldn’t have a rain shadow. Temperatures will be in the 90s Sunday and Monday but then much cooler for with the rain. 

The forecast has changed a bit since our last blog.  So I wanted to update you on those changes and their potential impact on our weather. After a really hot night, the dry cold front is sweeping through the area today, dropping temperatures about 10 degrees.  But extremely dry air is also moving into the area.  This will do 2 things; today, extremely high fire danger as relative humidities will be less than 10% in many locations, and winds will be gusting to 30 mph.  This is not the day to mow those dry weeds. Dry air also tends to allow temperatures to cool rapidly at night, as long as there is no wind or clouds.  That combination could yield some rather chilly temperatures Saturday morning.  It will be quite a contrast from last night.  Some locations (Springdale, Priest Lake, Deer Park) could actually dip into the upper 30s while most locations will be in the 40s. Unfortunately, the much cooler temperatures next week aren't going to be quite as cool as hoped.  Think upper 80s i

 As expected, things got rather hot rather quickly in the Northwest.  Spokane International hit 100F today, making this the 4th summer in a row of at least one triple-digit day.  Is that some sort of record?  No, just a notable number.  Tomorrow (Wednesday) will likely be just as hot as today.  In fact, Thursday probably won't see much cooling either.  So if you're not a fan of the heat, you'll have to wait until Friday before things start to cool down. Here's the weather pattern this afternoon (Tuesday).  Hot ridge of high pressure over the Northwest US and southwest Canada.  As I said in the previous blog, this pattern is fairly similar to our record-breaking heat wave a couple of years ago, just not quite as intense. By Friday, the entire pattern has changed.  The cool weather system currently over the Aleutians (above) swings into our area and completely destroys the high pressure ridge.  It doesn't just push it to our east.  So the result is a much cooler weath

The title of today's blog may sound a bit presumptuous.  After all, summer isn't over yet.  Let me show you why I'm pretty confident that next Tuesday will be the hottest day of this summer. Currently, cooler weather is winning the battle across the lower 48 states, including the Northwest.  But you'll notice a slight hint of a warm high pressure ridge developing off the WA/OR coast (red shading). By tomorrow afternoon, a strong area of high pressure has quickly developed in our neck of the woods.  This will cause temperatures to warm rapidly over the next few days. The peak of the heat looks to be on Tuesday, when the high pressure is at its strongest, with the center just off shore. This is a hot weather pattern.  But it's not connected to a 4-corners high.  Those tend to be long-lived heat waves (10-14 days).  Rather, this pattern looks rather similar to the heat wave of 2021.  Thankfully, we're not expecting to get that hot.  Also, this is a hot pattern for

The summer rain event is now over.  A few afternoon showers are still possible for the next few days, but the westerly winds have pushed the high moisture off to the east.  Whether the forecasts were a success or a failure likely depends on where you were located.   As you'll remember, there was actually 2 stages to this event.  The first on Saturday and Sunday was a low pressure system that moved into the area from the south, bringing with it a lot of monsoon moisture from the desert Southwest.  Stage 2 was are more "traditional" weather system coming at us from the west, which interacted with all of the moisture still in place to create more rain. For stage 1, here's a map of the estimated rainfall for Saturday and Sunday.  I say estimated because this is based on radar, not on actual rain gauges.   You can actually see the center of the circulation in the rainfall, down in southeast Yakima county.  This was a little farther south than anticipated.  As a result, the

  I wanted to provide a quick update to our upcoming rain event.  Now that we're within 48 hours, there are computer forecast models that show a depiction of what they think the radar will look like.   Again, these are just computer forecasts, not necessarily reality. Below is one model's expectation of the rain event.  There are others that are wetter, and others that are drier.  I chose this one as somewhat a middle-of-the-road.  The main things to take away from this are: There will be multiple impulses of rain moving into eastern Washington from the east . Each impulse looks like it will be a bit farther north than its predecessor. Spokane and points north could see a light sprinkle Saturday morning, but the heavier showers in northeast WA will be more likely starting in the late afternoon. There will be multiple impulses moving through the area Saturday night. The actual amount of rain is still very difficult to forecast.  Here's the average of 5 high-resolution comput

 East of the Rockies, summer rain is a common occurrence.  But in the Northwest, it's definitely a rarity.  (I might do a blog on historical summer rain to see if there is any sort of trend). We do have a pattern setting up that is more typical of May than mid-August, and it may bring us some rain starting Saturday through the middle of next week.  This will be due to 2 different storm systems: the first will come from our south, the second from the west. The satellite image from this morning shows a weather system to our south and east, centered over Wyoming.  If you recall the summer outlook I did back in early June , this pattern brought significant rain to eastern Montana in the spring and was expected to continue through the summer. This moisture in the intermountain West will move into eastern Montana and the Dakotas over the next couple of days.  But a small piece of this system is actually forecast to move into eastern Washington by this weekend.  This is a pretty odd patte