If you’re cursing the heat and feeling like it’s been warmer than usual, you’re not wrong. We haven’t set any records this July for the Tri-Cities, but our average high for this month has been 95.3, nearly four degrees above the “average average” (hope that’s not too confusing) of 91.4. I had a brief reprieve from the heat when I went to Calgary with my wife and her grandma, but this isn’t a travel blog so I won’t talk about that too much.
The five-day forecast will be a welcome sight for a lot of folks in the area. Sure, the breezy conditions aren’t ideal, but they also shouldn’t be that bad. Winds should only really be about 15 to 25 mph (with locally higher gusts). These winds, combined with low humidities, have prompted the National Weather Service to issue a couple of Red Flag Warnings for the region. For most of Morrow and Umatilla Counties (including Boardman, Hermiston, and Pendleton), the warning is in effect from now until Thursday evening. For Benton, Franklin, and Walla Walla Counties, the warning is in effect for Wednesday and Thursday.
Be especially careful with any sort of burning outside. I know this is repeated often during our dry summers, but the importance of this can’t be stressed enough. Massive fires, such as the Lake Wallula Fire near Wallula Jct. and the Substation Fire near The Dalles serve as a good reminder of just how easy it is for fires to spread in our part of the Pacific Northwest.
Beyond Thursday, highs will moderate out into the upper-80s. While this is only about five degrees below average for this time of the year, it’s a lot cooler than the 100-107 we’ve seen several times this month. If you’re hoping for cooler temperatures and rain, you’re out of luck in the short-term. Areas west of the Cascades will start to see some periodic showers, but I don’t expect any of those to cross over the mountains. The last time we had any sort of precipitation at the Tri-Cities Airport was June 30. Assuming we finish out Tuesday without rain (we don’t expect any rain), we will not have had a single drop for the entire month of July.
Most of the smoke we’ve seen the last couple of days has been from fires in Northern California. There have been a few exceptions to that, such as smoke Hermiston saw yesterday from the Lake Wallula fire, but for the most part, we have been spared from the smell of smoke. The smoke even helped us out quite a bit, keeping our temperatures well below the values around 105-108 that were being forecasted around Saturday and Sunday. The 103 the Tri-Cities saw yesterday is still hot, but we’ll take what we can get.
Our new weather pattern is clearly visible on the model above, which shows where there will be smoke around noon on Wednesday. For Monday and Tuesday, our region was inundated with conditions that periodically got into the red, but it’s clear that by tomorrow the upper-level winds will begin their shift from bringing air from California to bringing air from nearly due west.
The pattern change is also visible on the GFS model, which is shown above. I have here a comparison for modeled temperatures compared to average for both noon on Tuesday (when we were about 15 degrees above) and noon on Saturday (when we are expected to be 8-16 degrees below). While it’s hard to pin down specifics farther than about seven days out, there is a strong indication that we won’t see another oppressive heatwave like the last few we’ve seen this year.
“If getting rid of the heat makes you happy, then you are going to be happy for the next week if not longer, I doubt that we’ll see another heat wave like that this year.”
– Andy Haner, NWS Seattle Meteorologist (quoted in the Seattle Times)
This isn’t to say summer is over. This shouldn’t even lead you to believe that we won’t hit 90 again at some point this year, but it’s looking rather unlikely that we’ll have another strong heatwave (which is definitely welcome news to my wife, who hates anything above 75).
When we peer into next week, we see that below-average temperatures continue for most of the West and Alaska while the rest of the nation bakes. While it’s too early to tell specifics, the Climate Prediction Center even has us out for above average rainfall for the beginning of next week.
I’m not going to try to sugar coat it here – “above average rainfall” is super vague, especially when we average just over a quarter inch of rain for the entire month. What we do know now, though, is that the highest chances of rainfall unsurprisingly exist west of Interstate 5. Definitely don’t get your hopes set on decent rainfall, but as we get closer I’ll keep you updated over on my weather page on Facebook – Tri-Cities Weather.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have an excellent day!
This post was written at the Details 2 Enjoy studio in Hermiston.
