Inland Northwest Hay Weather

September 2025 has provided us with a lot of sunshine and warm temperatures. In fact, with a week to go, Spokane is looking at the potential for its warmest September ever.  A lot could happen in that last week, so it’s not a guarantee.  But 2025 September is currently running almost 3 degrees warmer than the current record holder of 1938.  Remarkably, second place was set last September.  The trend of the last few decades is clearly for a warmer September. But the computer models expect the month to end on a cooler and wetter note.  We’ll have one more day in the 80s tomorrow (Thursday). And then a dry, breezy cold front will drop our temperatures back into the 70s. The wind and warmth on Thursday could cause some wildfire concerns.  A change in the weather pattern will occur next week.  The first front on  Sunday night and Monday will bring a low chance of showers.  Tuesday and Wednesday will have a high chance of rain.  And there’s co...

As always, folks will differ in their opinion of what the summer weather was like. Was it a hot summer or just right?  Was it dry or wet? First, let’s start by looking at the entire lower 48 states. For temperatures, it was a little warmer than normal, but nothing outrageous.  The largest anomalies were in the Northwest. For precipitation, the West was drier than normal while the middle of the country was wetter than average. One notable exception to the dry conditions in the West was California Sierra Nevada as well as southeast Oregon. The monsoon season for Arizona and the Great Basin was a little disappointing .  A closer look at the summer precipitation of the Northwest shows that the dry conditions were confined largely to the Columbia Basin as well as western Washington and Oregon.  Southwest Oregon and north-central Montana had a wetter than normal summer.   One notable aspect of the map above is the area in dark red, which indicates the driest summer on...

Our cooler weather the past couple of days isn’t due to a change in the weather pattern, but rather due to the wildfire smoke blocking some of the suns rays. Here’s a morning satellite picture, showing the thick smoke over eastern Washington and the slowly approaching clouds over southwest Washington.  Thankfully, our changing weather pattern will also push the smoke out of our area. Here’s a computer depiction of the smoke on Saturday morning.  And here’s what that computer predicts things will look like by Monday morning.  And as our weather pattern changes, we’ll say goodbye to the unusual late summer heat wave, and welcome in highs in the 70s, which is actually what we should be at for this time of year.  But when will the rain arrive and how much will we get?  Our first chance of rain will be Saturday night and Sunday.  This is a very low probability event, which is common with the first wave after a dry spell.  Sprinkles for most, although a few ...

There were a couple of interesting articles in the Spokane news recently.  First, residents along parts of the Spokane River have noted that the river is actually going dry in some spots between Post Falls and downtown Spokane.  Here's a link to the Spokesman Review article .  This article does a nice job of listing a number of factors, including water management, heat, evaporation, drought, and the increased use of the Spokane aquifer, in part due to population increase. A few days later, there was another article pointing out that Spokane officially had it's driest summer (defined as June-August) ever (records began in 1881).  Here's a table of the 20 driest summers in Spokane. There's an interesting fact in this table.  Did you spot it?  Notice how many of the driest summers have occurred since 2000?  8 of the 20 driest summers have occurred in the last 25 years.   Here's a graph showing the summer precipitation for each year at Spokane....

We're currently in the middle of a rather unusual heat wave at the end of summer.  And some records could still be reached.  For those who aren't a fan of the heat, there's good news:  an end to the heat wave is in sight. Here's the somewhat odd weather map.  There's a skinny but strong area of high pressure over the Western US that extends up into BC and the Alaskan Panhandle. A weak low off the Washington coast is sending waves of moisture into our area at times.  This caused all of the clouds last night along with a few showers and thunderstorms.   Meanwhile, the eastern US is still experiencing fall-like temperatures.  Low temperatures in the 40s dipped all the way south into North Carolina this morning.  State College, PA has already had 3 nights in the 30s. By Thursday of this week, the weather pattern won't have changed a whole lot.  Another surge of cool air invades the Great Lakes region, while high pressure continues to dominat...