Thunderstorms Possible This Evening in Western Washington

 A line of thunderstorms is now moving up western Oregon at this time and is heading into western Washington.

A little after 2 PM, the thunderstorms were evident in the infrared satellite image, with the lightning indicated by red crosses.

A visible satellite image around 3 PM  showed the area of boomers clearly

The weather radar at 3:45 PM clearly indicates some impressive thunderstorm cells:

For short-term forecasts, the chosen tool is the NOAA HRRR model.  Here is the predicted radar image for 8 PM today.   Storms into southwest Washington and around Portland.

At 11 PM, they had moved northward towards Puget Sound.

Thanks to Dr. Peter Bender for suggesting a look at this.

Tropical Storm Moisture Will Bring Precipitation to the Northwest During the Driest Time of the Year

 We are now approaching the driest time of the year, and ironically, it is going to rain that day.  Temperatures will cool.

An important contributor will be a weakening tropical cyclone (Elida).   Below is the path of that storm from the National Hurricane Center:

And a recent infrared satellite image shows the moist storm off the northern California coast.

But where will the tropical moisture go?  You guessed it..... we will get a piece of it

Consider the forecast of atmospheric moisture from the European model over the next few days (below).

Moisture surges into our region starting late on Wednesday and hangs around through Sunday.

And this moisture will be associated with precipitation!  Here is the total through Thursday morning. You can see the remnant of tropical cyclone offshore.

And the precipitation won't stop..... take a look at the total rainfall through Wednesday morning, July 29th...the driest day of the year.  

Wow.  Lots in  British Columbia. 

Consider the forecast 24-h precipitation total ending 11 AM July 29th for our regoin.  Pretty wet for this time of the year.

Rain on this day will be personally embarrassing for me.... I had recommended that a couple get married that day if they wanted an outdoor wedding.