The Perfect Heat Wave

Thursday AM Update: Temps this morning are running about 5-7F ahead of yesterday, so today will peak in the lower to mid 90s for most. Low clouds on the coast, where it is much cooler today...a sign of the changes coming

This week we are having the perfect heat wave--long enough to get the feeling of warmth, but short enough that our homes and apartment won't heat up completely before the cool-down occurs...and there will be a substantial one on Saturday.

Tonight I am cooling down my house with lots of fans. I find that by putting on all the bathroom fans (which draw heat out of the house), coupled with four box fans in windows blowing cool air in, I can quickly get the house down to a decent temperature. The key with heat waves is to cool the house down at night...and to get shades down on the sunny side during the day. If the interior spaces warm up, you are toast...so to speak. I just watched Jeff Renner and he also suggests eating spicy foods. The theory is that it makes you sweat (as if we needed help doing that in hot weather!). So buy some fans and some 5-star Thai food and you should be good.

As advertised, today we warmed up into the upper 80s to lower 90s in the region. Take a look at the regional temperatures at 5 PM...near the time of maximum warmth. Click on the image to expand it. With offshore flow, even the coast was warm and Portland and Willamette Valley was way warmer than Puget Sound country. Why is the Willamette so torrid? The reason is that they don't have the proximity to water through a low-level passage. It is often 5-10F warmer there than near Seattle.

The warmth will continue tomorrow (Thursday)....I expect the temps to be very similar to today.

Below are the pressure and temperature plots for this afternoon and Thursday afternoon.....warm temperatures for both. At 5 PM today the thermal trough extends from the Willamette Valley into western Washington and easterly flow descends the western slopes of the Cascades. A very warm pattern.


Thursday afternoon we are still warm and the thermal trough appears split between western and eastern Washington.

On Friday, the trough of low pressure over western Washington "jumps" into eastern Washington and greater onshore flow will occur.

Expect Friday to a be a few degrees cooler. This process continues over Friday night and Saturday should be WAY cooler, with low clouds in the morning and temperatures in the upper seventies.

One final thing...some people like to make fun of meteorologists...saying their forecasts are wrong 50% of the time. Lets face it, my profession nailed this one....days ahead!