Endless Heat

If you like hot weather, then you're a very happy person right now.  Summer has arrived in the Inland Northwest and the forecast shows no signs of it slowing down.

Here's what the weather map looked like last Friday, when the heat started.  Strong high pressure developed right off of the West Coast.  It was a bit of an usual pattern.  Similar (but not as strong) to the record hot event of late June 2021, when Deer Park hit 111F.


Since then, the high pressure has slowly migrated to the east, causing our temperature to warm a few degrees each day.  Wednesday looks like it will be the hottest day of this week, when most folks will hit triple digits.  But notice the deep, cool low in the Gulf of Alaska. 


We won't get the full shot of this cool air from the Pacific.  Not even close.  The low will move into northern British Columbia on Wednesday.  And this will knock down the high pressure enough to bring a bit of cooling.  We used to call this a Marine Push, since most of the cooling would come from the marine-cooled air, rather than an actual cold front.


This Marine Push would be classified as weak.  We're not going to cool down much from it, and we won't get a lot of wind.  That said, Wednesday will be breezy in the afternoon and evening, especially in the Cascades.  Critical fire weather pattern there.  So don't do anything to cause a spark on Wednesday.



While this will bring a bit of cooling, Wednesday evening and night will be rather warm, due to the breezy winds.  

In fact, it looks like we'll see breezy afternoons for the next few days.


If you're wondering about any rain, forget about it.  Nothing on the horizon for the next 15 days.  That could change, but the odds are extremely low.

Here's the weather map for this coming Saturday.  The 4-corners high (over Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona) is firmly in place.  This pattern looks like it holds for the next several days.  The high pressure axis is just to our east (i.e. Montana), which should keep our temperatures in the lower 90s next week


In case anyone is wondering what the longest hot streak (i.e. consecutive days of 90F or hotter) is for Spokane, we've seen 2 long stretches of 90+ weather in the past few years.  We're only a few days into our current hot stretch; way too early to start calling for all-time records.  But it's not out of the realm of possibility.







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