Consistent Weather

Taking a quick look at the weather forecasts, it's kinda surprising how consistent the weather is from one day to the next.

First, here's the temperature and dew point forecast.  Yes, the temperatures (red line) cool a little bit for the latter half of the week (upper 80s instead of lower 90s), but then the lower 90s come right back by Sunday and continue next week.  The subtle change is the dew point (black line).  With our monsoonal moisture (see previous blog), our dew points have been in the uncomfortable range for Inland NW standards.  But we'll see those drop a bit, to around 50F instead of the lower 60s we had on Sunday.  This will reduce the threat of heavy dew for those who are working on 2nd cutting alfalfa.  But dew points around 50F are still on the humid side for August.  We won't see any low temperatures in the 40s with this pattern.

Then, look at the rain chances for the next 10 days.  I chose Newport instead of Deer Park for this graph.  No huge chances of rain, but a pretty consistent chance of rain each day. It's sort of like I said in my previous blog: you're probably going to get at least a little rain, I just can't tell you which day it will fall.  I know, that's not a lot of help.

This is a little unusual for August.  As an example, we don't often see this kind of an outlook for the middle of August from the Climate Prediction Center:

Most of the rain will be in the form of mountain showers each day.  But there is a chance of some of these showers moving over the valleys and even the Basin.  Since our dew points will be around 50, some of these showers could put down a decent amount of rain.  As an example, here's a European ensemble model forecast for Saturday rainfall.  The forecast for other days next week looks pretty similar.

One thing that will be a little variable is our winds.  The graph below is the wind (green shading) and wind gust (yellow shading) forecast.  You can see the winds are going to increase Wednesday night and remain gusty through Friday.  The winds will actually be from the northeast and are complements of a weak "back door" cool front.  (We call it a "back door" front because it sort of backs into us from the northeast).  So it will bring a little cooling for the latter part of the week.  But if you're in an area that is exposed to northeast winds, you might not cool down as well at night and as a result you won't have much dew.

So I won't say that the weather will be the same every day for the next 10 or more days.  But it will be pretty similar.  Temperatures will be around 90F.  You'll see showers develop most days, and every few days one of them will move over your area and bring some rain.