May Felt Chilly, but it Wasn't

This last month was a bit cloudier than normal and I think that led me to "feel" like it was a chilly May. it wasn't in fact it was quite the opposite. Overnight lows averaged a balmy +3° and daytime temps were slightly warmer than average. It was a about normal for the rain bucket as well with a little less than my average of 3.25 inches. May ended with thunderstorms over the weekend resulting in enough rain to push my station to near normal. June begins with the warm rays of El Sol, but don't be lured in by the Siren of Spring, T-storms and showers will return.

On the temps the chilliest measure I got was a nippy 37.5° on the morning of the 4th. The coolest afternoon high was 56.4° on the 14th. I did mange to top 90° for the first time in 2020 when the merc produced a warm 90.7° on the 28th. The warmest overnight low was a a rather summer-like 59.4° on the 29th of course following the month's high. That 90.7° mark was the only day that manged to reach into the realm of "hot" aside from that day the month produced four additional days above 80° and a total of 10 days above 70°. There was just the one morning under 40° but there was ten more that dipped into the 40s.

May produced 3.00 inches of rain at my station measured against my typical 3.25 inches. The wettest day was 0.39 on the 15th which was one of six days with more than 1/4 inch. We had 15 days with measurable precipitation and 4 days of mostly sunshine. In a nutshell, that was a warm and cloudy month.

June is here and miss spring will fight hard to dazzle us with her moody attitude but in a few weeks the glorious summer will arrive delivering weeks on end of beautiful sunshine that should shine upon us with little interruption until mid-September.

Get outside keeping your distance of course, and soak up the sunshine for the next few days. Look at all that glistening snow on the high Cascade peaks. Yes indeed soak it up.

Happy New Year!

Well 2019 is toast and we are now marching into a new decade. December weather wise went out with a bit of a warm whimper.

December had no really cold mornings and daily averages were about 3 above normal on both ends of the day. We had a month filled with clouds and rain which is typical, but the amount of rain was still only about 65% of normal at my locations and similar results were measured around the metro area. Had it not been for a light round of flurries very late on November 30th that carried over to December 1st in the early AM I would have had the first December in five years with zero snow. As it was the snow was barely measurable and did not make it to sunrise.

We do really need some epic levels of precipitation. The last several years have been sub par on rainfall. I hope this new year provides some needed rain and snow.

Temps were not drastic on either extreme just a bit warmer on average overall. The average overnight low came it at a warm 36.95° more than 3° above normal and the average high was nearly equally warm at 46.25° nearly 3° over. The coldest overnight low was 28° on the 26th, which is a garden variety value for a cloudless night in December. Yawn. That was one of only three nights under 30° and just seven nights with freezing temps. The warmest overnight low was a shocker when the merc manged to stay above 50°, yes FIFTY degrees for the low. That occurred on the 20th when the thermometer bottomed out at a balmy 50.2° which ultimately led to the warmest day of the month when it reached 56.3° later in the day. The chilliest afternoon high was a crisp 38.5° on Christmas Eve which as it turned out was the only day that failed to reach 40°. December had four days that manged to push the red line into the 50's.

Overall we did not even come anywhere near any daily record lows nor did we come anywhere near the coldest daytime highs of Decembers past. It wasn't that the temperature was excessively warm last month, it was on average three degrees, it was just so consistently warm rather than a bunch of extremes.  It was simply warm for December, the whole month. I did set one local daily high temp record on the 20th when that 56.3° temp was recorded.

The precipitation side of last month was equally boring. We had one pineapple express event that dropped nearly half of the month's rainfall over a three day period from the 19th through the 21st during which 2.48 inches fell including the wettest day of the whole YEAR at 1.02 inches on the 21st. December yielded 9 days with over a quarter inch of rain and 14 days with measurable precipitation. The aforementioned snow was barely measurable with a total of just a few millimeters on the early morning of the 1st that briefly accumulated to about 0.1 inch.

The year ended with 138 sunny days, 107 rainy days, and 14 days with snow or ice. On the cold side we had 59 sub freezing mornings, 3 sub 20° mornings, only 13 days that failed to reach 40° and every single day in 2019 manged to make above the freezing mark by afternoon. The coldest overnight low was a chilly 19.4° and the coldest daytime high was 34.5° both of these were in March! A total of 8.3 inches of snow fell with nearly all of it coming in February. That snow total was a tad under my 19 year average. Rainfall for the calendar year of 2019 (rainfall is typically measure seasonally from September to August), was only 26.63 inches about HALF of my local normal of 53.36 inches. It's time for us all to do a rain dance, we need it!

On the warm side of things, we had absolutely no days at 100° or more, and only nine days that busted into 90s. 190 days managed to climb to 60° or more, and the hottest temp was 98.8°. The warmest overnight low was a warm and cozy, 65.5°.

We have a fabulous northern maritime climate here that just tends to avoid the extremes. 2019 was no exception. Think about this, 237 days in 2019 saw overnight lows of 50° or more. That is 2/3 of the year with toasty warm lows! 190 days in 2019 saw high temps at or above 60° which is more than half the year!

Looking forward into 2020 we are starting off mild with today's temp already tickling the 50° zone. Weather pros however are watching closely at things over Alaska. That notoriously cold state has been experiencing some of the coldest weather in a decade. The jet stream could make a correction and drag a bunch of that hyper frosty arctic air over the top of us and things can get wintry really fast. Happy New Year!     

July is done and it was a fairly boring month. Seriously nothing weather worthy really happened. No heat wave, not crazy rainstorm, no rogue tornado, nothing. The last several summers have been a bit on the warm side but not this one my friends. 2019 thus far has been pretty old school normal.

July was no exception as the merc at my station only broke the 90° mark one time! Yes just a single ninety for the month of July. The month featured 24 deliciously sunny days many of those having some morning clouds to start. Temps were under my established norms some 2 degrees cooler in fact by days with a average high of just 78.13° against my 18 year "normal" of 80.06°. Overnight lows were a bit warmer than average with 57.22° about a degree warmer and that could be attributed to the extra cloud cover in the early AM hours. There were just two evenings with temps below 50° and that's typical as July tends to be the warmest month. The highest temp recorded was a wimpy 90.5° on the 26th and that was followed by the warmest overnight low on the 27th at 63.9°. There were four days that failed to make it to 70° but 13 popped up above 80°. The chillest overnight low was a comfortable 49.6° on the 20th.

The rain gauge recorded yet another sub-par performance. In all fairness July and August are often below normal rainfall as the summer averages are skewed by monster thunderstorm events that occur every 5 years or so. July is often rain free but every now and then we get a 3-4 inch rain event in July and that throws off the average. I'm far more concerned about our sub-par winter months than these under average summers. That said, the most rain was on the 9th when 0.15 inches hit my bucket. There were only 2 days over 0.03 inches and a total of just 6 days with any precipitation at all.

So far this year just four days above 90° and that is well off a typical pace. There were two in June, One last month and another this month. We still have a lot of August to go and the first half of September can produce some scorchers as well, but my gut says we are headed for fewer than ten 90° days this year.

We are -17.43 inches for rain this year. Just 12.04 inches in the gauge thus far. We will need a hyper wet fall to catch that up.

So there it is July was bland but beautiful and we eagerly await what August shall bring.

May you fickle May, June you Fickle June!

So there goes yet another DRY month. I can't remember the last time I recorded a month with at least average precipitation. So I had to look it up. It was February and March of 2017 when 9.41 inches and 7.45 inches respectively fell into my rain gauge. Some of that fell in the form of snow (.55 inches snow). Since then it has been dry, dry, and a little bit dry.

At some point our weather pattern should return to the soggy days of old. Temps have been on the up trend as well and last month was no exception. My local temps were about 2° above my established "norms" both overnight and daytime highs. 

Honestly this last month did not feel "warmer" than average. I think the mini heat-wave near the start of the month skewed the averages, because there was a fair amount of cloud cover and a great deal of typical May weather last month.

As far as temps go, I recorded two days that were personal daily records, May 9-10, when I recorded 85.8° and 89.2° respectively. These were two of the four days that topped out above 80°. The 89.2° mark on the 10th was the high for the month, well short of my May record of 95.3° set back in 2008. The warmest overnight low arrived on the 27th. The coldest temp was measured on the first day of the month with a nippy 37.6°, one of two mornings to dip into the thirties. The chilliest daytime high was a cool 54.7° on the 25th which was a rather damp day. All told there were 15 days with overnight temps under 50° and 26 days that were above 60°.

On the precipitation side of the equation it was in a word, dry. We had 15 days with mostly sunshine and 6 days with some rain. The wettest day was a modest 0.51 inches on the 19th which was one of only two days to spill more than a 1/4 inch.

May and June often struggle to find their weather place. These two months can deliver genuine summer type heat waves as well as chilly temps nearly reminiscent of winter. We never really know what these two months will bring so we must be prepared for anything. This year June has decided to start off with a taste of summer. As I wrap this article up it is 1:30 and the temp is at 76° probably on its way to an 80° or so late this afternoon. Ah yes, delightful :) But don't let Miss Spring get into your head, our local neighbor, Portland, OR has a Rose Festival to run; and it just wouldn't be a Rose Festival without some cool and damp weather. Miss Spring will likely oblige.

Soak it up my friends, soak it up.

April Showers and a heatwave!

April is in the books and not surprising, she was rather fickle and feisty. The month started out with a some chilly weather including lows below freezing and highs int eh middle 40s. That's chilly in April. But it didn't take long for Mr. Hyde to switch back to Dr. Jekyll and some nice spring weather presided over several days early in the month. Up and down and back and forth Miss Spring toyed with us in April. The showers we expect in April were a bit under the typical. Towards the end of the month Mr. Hyde emerged again and this time he was a bit 'hot' under the collar with the first 70° mark coming in at nearly eighty degrees and temperatures that would get into the middle to upper eighties.

On the thermometer we saw a seesaw of action. The coldest mark cam on the morning of April 3rd with a sub freezing 30.4° one of 11 days with lows in the 30s which is a bit many for this late in the year. The chilliest afternoon high was the day of the fool, April 1st when the mercury topped out at a nippy 46.8°. On the other end of the spectrum the warmest temperature was a toasty and very July-like 86.4° on the 26th. That hot day followed the first eighty plus mark of the year on the 25th when it was 82.9 and that followed the aforementioned first 70 when it was 79.7° on the 24th. The weird part was that the day after the scorcher only managed a high of 55.9°. What a quick departure from summer and back to "early" spring conditions. Average temps over the month were a tad above my 17 year average with 43.7° low and 60.84° high, 2 and 1 degree over respectively.

Nearly all of the month's rain came in the first half and only 2.8 inches hit the pan well shy of my typical 4.24 inches. Nary a flake of snow fell in the valley but there was quite a bit of low elevation snowfall for April with the local foothills getting several dustings over the month. The higher foothills such as Silver Star still have bits of winter clinging to the surface here in May. The wettest day was the 7th when I recorded 0.61 inches.

So far May is starting out rather cool and uneventful. The weather gang at NWS Portland seem to think some nice spring weather with highs in the low to mid 70s are coming up later this week. Springalicious!

Soak it up my friends, soak it up.

Summer Season is here, but Summer is not.

The merry month of May is in the books and statistically is was pretty darn 'normal'. Overnight lows averaged almost dead 'normal' and the average daily high was about a degree above 'normal'. Rainfall came in well under normal but May is a month with a wide range of variance so it was really pretty typical. The Memorial Day Weekend was pretty nice with mid eighties on Saturday and Sunday and a mild 76° on Monday. June is starting off cloudy and damp and that is typical as well. For most of America, June kicks off the summer season. Here on the west side of the Cascade mountains, June remains firmly in the grasp of spring and her volatile moods.

Temperatures were literally a roller coaster ride on the chart. On May 4th we had a nice sunny 83.1° for the high and it was followed by a chilly 59.5° on Cinco de Mayo. So went the whole month.

The only hot day was the 22nd when my thermometer topped at at exactly 90° the only reading to breech the nineties all month. I had eight days with a reading in the eighties or better and ten days that failed to reach 60°. The warmest overnight low came on the 4th with a summerish 56.5° and the coolest temperature came the morning of the 1st when it was a nippy 37.9°. That was one of four mornings that dipped into the thirties overnight. Such is the fickle nature of spring time in the Northwest. The chilliest daytime high was a cool 52° on the 13th.

As for the rainfall it shows up as below average but really May is often beset with light thunderstorms and scattered showers. My rainfall was light but other ares very near me probably recorded above average rainfall. I had nary a day above 1/4 inch of rain and just 8 days with precipitation. That said there were a couple of days where the region had strong thunderstorms including one that triggered an alert from the "Emergency Broadcast Network". That alert was for the northern part of Clark County where serious lightning strikes, flash flooding, and golf ball size hail were coming down. I got light showers during that event. Another amazing light show went on for nearly two hours to my south, but again the rain from that one missed me. So 1.24 inches was my bucket total for May well under my 3.25 average. The wettest day was the 16th with 0.24 inches.

June will likely be a roller coaster for the first half before we see a summer pattern develop. Such it is in late spring. May and June tend to be unpredictable. But the next sic weeks will deliver long, long, long daylight as we move into that period where we have 18 hours of light, dawn to dusk. Cloudy or not, that is good stuff :)

Average August

Last month pretty much went down like a typical August. Daily high temps were boosted slightly above average by a short but hot heat wave with temps perilously close to 100 degrees. Some areas in and around the Portland-Vancouver Metro did bust into the triple figures. I did not however. In fact, I have not yet seen a 100 degree mark this year. That is not unusual as the last 15 years of reporting at this location, 9 years had no 100 degree days. Furthermore, I have only recorded a total of 10 days in triple figures since 2002.

September is a month that can produce hot temps, but if we fail to smack the 'century bell' in the next two weeks, we won't.

Rain was slightly on the scarce side but typical for August and overnight lows were a little cooler than average so the mean temp was probably as close to statistical normal as is possible.

We had 7 days over ninety degrees in August and that compares to a typical YEAR getting only 10 such days. The hottest of those was a mark of 99.3 degrees on the 19th. Humidity was fairly dry that day at around 25-30% so the "feels like" temp was around 102 or so. The average daily high for the month came in about 2 degrees warm with 82.1 observed against the long term average of 80.21. The coolest afternoon high was a moderate 66.7 degrees on the 9th with some scattered showers about.

The overnight lows averaged out at 55.79 which is only around a 1/2 degree cooler than the typical 56.35. There were 3 days with overnight lows stuck in the 60s including the balmiest evening low of 62.8 on the 13th. The chilliest mark came the morning of the 6th when the mercury decided to take a dip to 48.7. That was one of three lows below 50 degrees.

Nothing exciting on the 'skywater' scene for August. I recording a dry 0.26 inches of rain falling below the "normal" mark of 1.27. Honestly July and August rainfall is typically less than 0.50 inches but every few years a big thunderstorm rolls in and drops 2 or 3 inches and skews the average. Kind of like snowfall in the winter, we usually get a dusting or two each year but every 4-5 years we get a dumping.

Speaking of snow, I bought a Jeep, so it damn well better be a snowy winter this year ;)

Get out and soak it up my friends, summer is coming to a rapid close. Soak it up.

January: a tale of Jekyll and Hyde

This glorious new year started off much like its predecessor ended; it was a bit chilly. Nothing record breaking, not even close, but chilly and even a bit snowy. About halfway through the month things began to get warm and wet. Not record breaking wet like December 2015, but a solid eight and a half inches of precipitation managed to find the rain gauge. This translated into gobs of fluffy white powder in the upper elevations and torrents of rushing water down here.

There were enough fifties in January to catch the attention of the marketing people at AARP. Downtown Vancouver and parts of Portland were playing footsie with 60 degrees, I topped out at 56.5 on the 25th, one of 7 days finding the 50 plus mark. The warmest over night low came on the 27th with a toasty 46. Early in the month the chilliest morning was the 3rd with a modest mark of 23.5, one of 11 days under the freezing mark. The coldest daytime high arrived later that same day when the mercury failed to get out of the 20's, peaking at 29.5. That was the only day that couldn't get above freezing and it turned out to be the snowy day as well when 1.75 inches fluffy white was on the ground. A little bit more snow fell over the next few days mostly as mixed precipitation.

Speaking of precipitation, the month finished up with 8.57 inches in the bucket which for me is about an inch and a half above my 15 year average. 22 days of rain but relatively dry compared to the 16 inch deluge that ended 2015. A flat 2 inches of snow fell from the 3rd through the 5th, nearly all of it on the 3rd. The snow actually hung around in shady spots for over a week; it's unusual for such a light dusting to hang around that long. The wettest day had 1.01 inches of rain; that was one of 13 days with a 1/4 in the bucket or more and one of four with more than 3/4 inch.

Overall the month was about dead on average for daytime highs and a couple of degrees warmer over night by the norms. This may turn out to be a fickle winter; the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde analogy may continue to be relevant as the year progresses. Central Washington has been in a pretty deep freeze most of this winter and if that cold air stays in place east of the Cascades, a cold snap is inevitable here in the West. We shall see.

Warm and cool, warm and cool. Soak it up my friends, soak it up.