Early in the month a significant east wind event allowed a handful of "manageable" wildfires to get out of hand and merge into a giant ferocious, California style event. The east winds pushed the flames over the Cascade crest and down into the green side of the mountains. Even the Western side of Oregon and Washington get a little dry in September. Portland reported the worst air quality on the planet for at least two days during the smoke filled second week of the month.
Fortunately some good old fashioned late summer rain doused the flames and gave fire fighters some much needed help. The systems also helped clear out that nasty air that peaked above 500 on the air quality charts.
Temps were mostly mild, I recorded just one day above ninety degrees but PDX had four. The other three days landed just under 90° at my station. That left me with a typical seasonal total of 11 days above 90° for 2020 and no days over 100°. This is the third straight year with no triple digit temps at my station. Now those of you wondering about adding a ninety plus day in October, I have never recorded a 90° day in October since charting temps here in 2002. In fact my all-time high for the month is just 83.2°. So it is a safe bet that nineties have rode off into the sunset for 2020. One never knows however.
The warmest daytime high arrived on the 3rd of the month with 92.2° the warmest overnight low was a toasty 67.6° on the 9th under blustery conditions that led to an invasion of fire smoke later that week. The chilliest temp was 50.6° mark on the morning of the 13th under a thick blanket of smoke. That led to a chilly afternoon high of just 61.9° on the same day. Oddly September came and went with no temperatures below 50 degrees! There were 12 sunny days but there were at least 5 more sunny days ruined by the fire smoke. A dozen days made it above 80° and that's a fair bit for September.
Rainfall at my location came in above average, but only by a few tenths. A win is a win, we have had sub-par rainfall nearly every month for the last few years. I registered 2.6 inches in the rain bucket with only 6 days showing any measurable precipitation. A nice fat 1.02 inch fell on the 26th. 3 days left at least a quarter inch of rain.
October is here and with it we should witness a precipitous drop in temps over the course of the month. I have no doubt some last gasps of summer may show up perhaps an 80° here of there, but that will come this week and not likely much further into the month. All of that stated it's 2020 and if we all know anything at all, it's that 2020 is nuts, we may hit 100° or maybe a blizzard will roll in for the kiddies on Halloween ;)
Soak it up my friends, soak it up.
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