Uncertain Fourth

In the previous blog I mentioned that there was too much uncertainty in the computer forecasts to look very far into the future. Unfortunately that’s still the case. 

I’ve shown the graph below on a previous occasion, but it can be a little confusing so I try not to mention it. So I’ll try to explain. There are three computer centers that produce multiple computer forecasts.  The US, the Canadian, and the European. All together they produce 100 computer forecasts. You can easily average them all together, but this can hide possible scenarios. So another way is to look for clusters of solutions.

Below shows four possible scenarios for July 2nd. It doesn’t take a meteorologist to figure out that each one is different.  Some have the hot high pressure (orange color) over the Northwest.  This would bring hot and dry weather.  But the other two have the high pressure to our east.  This would mean a cooler forecast for us, along with a threat of showers. And each of these four clusters has about a 25% chance of being right.

So at this point, it’s difficult to say with any certainty what the exact weather will be next week.

We’ll continue to see a threat of afternoon mountain showers Thursday and Friday, mainly near the BC border. We could see a very light shower Thursday night as far south as Spokane, but it probably won’t be enough to affect any hay operations. 

Afternoons should continue to be breezy through Saturday.  Our dew point should remain around 45 degrees so a light dew is possible during the early morning hours, especially in fields sheltered from the wind.

After that, we will see temperatures warm quickly over the weekend, reaching into the 90s by Monday. After Tuesday, we might stay hot, or settle back into the 80s.  Rain chances next week are low, less than 10%, but they’re not zero either. We’ll have to wait a bit longer for the extended forecast to work itself out. 

The Climate Prediction Center sees things this way for the period 3-9 July.

It’s not often that we have an outlook that is both hotter than normal and wetter than normal. One possible way to achieve this, since this covers a 7 day period, is that it could be hot during the first few days of the period, then wet. The precipitation outlook looks like a strong start to the Southwest Monsoon season.