Drizzle & Sizzle

Good morn’n, Patron.  While you nurse that morn’n ☕️Mug, here’s the latest outlook, which has taken a favorable turn - maybe.

Drizzle.  First portion of this week will be pleasurable outside, with clouds at times and a few showers or drizzles, esp north of Portland late Tue into Wed.  The cold front is not going to be as aggressive as earlier expectations (it is August, after all), so most of OR and the east side will get very little precip, if any.  Key feature will be the cooler temps ahead of the heat wave that is still charting.  

Sizzle.  Starting Thu, and then on into the coming weekend, temps will begin to ramp up.  Right now, the Aug 12,13 weekend is looking to present mid-to-upper 80s, with 90s across portions of southern OR; tad cooler for the Sound & BC.  Next week we continue to expect the hottest temps of the summer, thus far.  Even with slight model adjustments, we still see temps exceeding 100 in many western locations during the Tue - Thu, Aug 15-17 period; Wed may end up being the hottest - say, 102 or so in the Willamette Valley.  There remains a good chance for the ‘heat wave’  (90+ each day) to last more than 3 or 4 days, but an 8 day consecutive run may not occur.  Again, we’ll see what verifies.

The favorable turn is that maybe, just maybe, a cooler marine air mass from the NW will ‘break’ the length of the coming heat wave, with temps dropping back to mild-warm by the weekend of Aug 19,20 - think onshore flow that will hold down temps to seasonal or slightly below for about 4 days.  Thunderstorms probable along the Cascades and over southern OR.  Hotter weather begins to build in again on Wed Aug 23.  East side locations will also cool down Aug 19,20 before returning to seasonal norms shortly thereafter.  

The relatively higher humidity this past weekend really brought out the ‘Song of Summer’ chorus.  Hope you noticed.