How sweet it is!
Delightful summer weather will unfold today with highs about 80 degrees before temperatures climb close to 90 degrees on Sunday.
The Fourth of July dawned on the chilly side, with morning lows in the 40s and even a few upper 30s in the higher elevations. The official low for Vancouver was 47 degrees but I had 42 degrees here in Salmon Creek with a touch of shallow fog. Brrr!
On Wednesday morning, Astoria, Ore., tied its record low for July 4 of 45 degrees, which was set just last year.
I had many emails asking me about the extreme heat back east and if it is tied to global warming My answer, of course, is that weather occurs in cycles as variances in climate. My question would be: If 100 -year temperature records are being broken, what caused it to be so hot say 100 years ago? Many of those old records occurred way before the industrial revolution of the early 1900s.
Moving right along, we have a very nice extended forecast setting up with no rain in sight and warm temperatures. We’ll go from about seasonal temperatures Thursday to way above for a few days and then back down to seasonal highs in the upper 70s later next week. Couldn’t ask for anything better, could we?
We always hear that summer weather begins after the Fourth of July and many times it rains on the Fourth. That is kind of a myth if you look at the long-term records. The state climate office had this to say about July rainfall: “Why is early July so much wetter and cooler than late July across much of the state? This transition in the weather is linked to evolution in the regional atmospheric circulation, mostly in the form of a pole ward shift.”
Don’t know why, it just is.
Enjoy the rest of your glorious week, get out the sunblock, fill the kiddies’ wading pools and grab a cold one. Enjoy our 40-day summer. Ha-ha!
Patrick Timm is a local weather specialist. His column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Reach him at Weather Systems.
