Any Rain in Sight?

After a bone dry July, I think most folks would like to see some August rains. Any chance of that?  Unfortunately there’s only a very small chance.  In the meantime, we’re looking at a week or more of dry days.

Here’s the chance of rain over the next 10 days at Deer Park.  Only a 10% chance of something around the 14th.  And nothing heavy.


In the meantime, we’re going back into a warm and breezy pattern. Friday will be the hottest day, and then a gradual cooling trend. The gradual cool down means that we probably won’t see a strong windy event. But we will still see breezy afternoons for the next week as a westerly jet stream sets up overhead. This is the wind forecast for Spokane.  Gusts to 20 mph each day for the next week. 


Our atmosphere will continue to be very dry.  Drier than August usually is, with dew points in the 30s. This will allow our nighttime temperatures to continue to fall into the 40s.  But with such low dew points, it will continue to be hard to create any dew. 





Smoke will also play a role, both in air quality and in temperature. Smoke scatters the suns rays so on smoky days we will be a few degrees cooler than the forecast, since nearly all of the computer models don’t incorporate smoke into their predictions. With so many fires in the local area as well as in the Cascades it will be hard to clear out the smoke for an extended length of time.  

Here’s an example forecast from one computer model that does predict smoke. The forecast is for Friday night.  Don’t get hung up about the details. I’m only showing this to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with. 


And here’s a satellite picture from this morning.  The white clouds along the coast are the usual fog and low clouds. The brown clouds over eastern Washington are all wildfire smoke. 




Looking back at July, it was warmer and drier than normal, which we already knew. 









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