Heat Followed by Cool and Wet

In the last blog we discussed a gradual warm up this week followed by a cool down next week. That still looks like it will happen, pretty much on schedule. Let’s talk about some of the details. 

Currently, high pressure is located to our west. This has caused our temperatures to warm a bit, but it also allows weak weather systems to pass by to the north of the high pressure and then drop down into our area.  We saw this the past two days, with clouds and a few sprinkles.


But now the high pressure is on the move, and will be squarely over the Northwest this weekend and early next week. This will bring us our first 90 degree days on Sunday and Monday, and probably Tuesday. 


But on the weather map above there is a small area of low pressure near Anchorage, Alaska.  This is going to develop into a much larger storm and head for the Pacific Northwest. Here’s the expected weather map for next Friday.  This is a cool and wet pattern for our area. And the computers expect it to hang around for about a week or more. 


So what does this mean for our weather and your hay harvest?  First, as I said, it’s going to get hot. 90s for Sunday through Tuesday.  Dew points will climb into the lower 50s. This will mean dry afternoons with humidity around 20%, but then dew forming overnight. 


Wind will be very light during the night and morning. Afternoon winds will be about 10 mph with a few gusts to 15 mph. These will gradually increase each day next week as our storm approaches. 


The first chance of rain will start Tuesday and Wednesday. Thunderstorms are expected to develop over eastern Oregon and move up into western Montana.  Most of this should remain to our east, but there is a small chance that we could get something out of this. Here’s what the European model expects for rainfall during this period. 



After that, our chances of rain keep increasing. It’s still too far out with too much uncertainty to tell you exactly when and how much. Here’s one graph that might help. It shows the chances of certain amounts of rain each day for the Deer Park area. 


You can see that the chances keep increasing each day. Also, some forecasts predict a half inch or more. These are in the minority, but it does show what is possible. 

And yes, there’s a chance that we might not get any rain at all next week. Some computer forecasts keep all of the rain to our north or east. But given the overall weather pattern, I’d say the odds are pretty low that we won’t get any rain. Our chances of rain will probably be about 50% by next Friday and then stay like that for a week. 







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