July 29, 2009

Update

I don't know if I have ever seen temperatures rise this fast around here before. We had very warm air aloft and a very shallow inversion above the surface. This inversion was rapidly mixed out by surface heating and the easterlies aloft...thus, the rapid temp rise. Some of the warmest temps are in the foothills (e.g., North Bend) due to the downslope flow off the Cascades. In fact, with offshore flow the foothills can be the warmest locations in the whole region. The north Sound is much warmer today (now 93 in Everett)

Probcast (www.probcast.com) is back up....the power outage on campus is over. I bet it was heat related (it was a transformer failure)

Sea-Tac actually went down last hour (93 to 90), as weak northwesterlies reached the airport. If the temps continued to rise at the rate they were going we would have been 120F today. So the pause is expected...don't worry, it will start up again next hour.

51 comments:

  1. There were beautiful anvil-shaped thunderheads over the Snoqualmie Valley and the Csacde foothills last night. This has been the case every evening this week. Thunderheads with no thunder or rain, what gives?

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  2. There's been plenty of thunder and rain, it's just been stuck up in the mountains!

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  3. The (rooftop) weather station on to of the SAAM in Volunteer Park, Seattle, WA just hit 100.0F at 11:27am.

    http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KWASEATT110

    Yikes.

    Denise:

    Take a look at the radar in the evening and you'll find those thunderheads are over the crest of the Cascades (convergence clouds). You can see they're at the county boundaries shown on the radar)

    Hot air rising up both east and west slopes and the converges together to give an updraft above the ridge line. They're the only place seeing any real precip. NWS discussion even commented on that yesterday.

    Another weather feature mentioned in Cliff's book :-)

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  4. And KBFI was down most of last evening as well. 3-day history shows no updates between 22:53 28 Jul and 08:53 29 Jul.

    http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/getobext.php?wfo=sew&sid=KBFI&num=72

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  5. It's about 11:50 a.m. and I'm looking at Cliff's post saying it's 93 in Everett. I'm in Everett and it's 80 here. ???

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  6. It's getting quite hazy in Olympia. KOLM METAR is reporting 6 miles in haze. Is this related to air stagnation?

    Does this tend to slow down afternoon heating?

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  7. jorge: The obs were taken but they're not on the NWS site for some reason (comms issues?)

    You can find them if you use the UW decoded obs service

    http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~stoves/td.cgi

    for KBFI.

    All the obs are there including 0553z to 1753z on Jul 29 (to convert your local times to UTC).

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  8. 95.9F at Parkland, Washington at 11:57am.

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  9. Here in Lake Stevens it hit around 90 at about 9:15am this morning.

    Talking about fast rising temps. My girlfriend and I were watching the temp gauge right around 9:15. We watched it rise 3 degrees in 5 minutes. It went from 90 to 93 in 5 minutes or less.

    I would never have expected the temps to rise that fast.

    I'm hoping we get to at least 100 today, although the rising temps slowed down a lot, hopefully Cliff is correct and the temps start going up again.


    TIP: To stay cool, put some ice in from of a fan. This is the poor-man's Air Conditioning. It's working great so far in my home office which yesterday reached 95 inside my house. Right now it's around 85.

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  10. 85 and cloudy in Ellensburg. 10+ degrees cooler than the west side, wow...

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  11. I am in Maple Valley and I don't have a thermometer, but it feels quite a bit cooler to me today than yesterday. We have had steady breezes all morning up to the current time and some puffy clouds blocking the sun. So not too bad.

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  12. Can we get an eta on some precip, Cliff? I'm seeing some unfriendly 10 day forescasts...

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  13. Can we get an eta on some precip, Cliff? I'm seeing some unfriendly 10 day forescasts...

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  14. Bellevue's Phantom Lake Elementary's official reporting station shows 100.0F as of 12:15. The overnight low there was 71. Holy cow.

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  15. 99 in the shade at 12:30 p.m. in our backyard, north end of Capitol Hill, elevation 217 feet.

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  16. 99.5 in the shade in Seattle. Good grief. Bon Jovi. 99 in the Shade!

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  17. 12:27PM <@nina> 97.2 °F
    12:27PM <@nina> it goes up like two degrees every 10 minutes
    12:27PM <@nina> something is screwy

    A minute later I see your post.... heh.

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  18. There are actually clouds over the sun at the moment. Where did they come from?

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  19. No joke, Google Weather is currently showing it 108 degrees in Maple Valley at 12:43. I think there is something screwy with their thermometer.

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  20. 98.2 at Parkland, Wa
    12:41pm
    per Wunderground

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  21. I see an even 104 in the shade on my deck In Maple Valley. The warm winds have died down, but the lake has lots of stuff off the fir trees floating around.

    The closest Weather underground site to me says 108.9.

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  22. Slung the temprature here in downtown bellingham(Sling psychrometer)93deg Little breez trying to pick up-but not much...

    Yummi

    13:00hrs

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  23. Volunteer Park had a blip at 12:27pm which took the temp back to 99F with the wind swinging from E to N.

    SInce reversed and back to the E wind with 100F temps.

    That compressed flow from the east really is giving that extra bump.

    Seatac again is getting some cooling Puget Sound breeze and some clouds.

    29 Jul 12:53 A Few Clouds 96 61 32 W 8

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  24. Officially, it's basically mid-90s down the I-5 corridor in WA even as far as Kelso, so things have pretty much "evened out." Wonder if we'll now see a slow and steady march up in temps . . .

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  25. Yes, the west side foothills are getting the compressed air

    Packwood, 101° gusts to 19 RH 23%

    Emumclaw 100°

    Troutdale and The Dalles 99° with gusts to 21 RH 27 and 22%

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  26. Google Weather now has Maple Valley at 1:12 p.m. at 94 degrees, which I would say is pretty accurate. It was 109 degrees about 15 minutes ago.

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  27. At 1:15PM it is just hitting 100 degrees 3 blocks south of Woodland Park Zoo. My car thermometer said 100 degrees in Ballard.

    I jumped in the kiddie pool and feel much cooler!

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  28. Lake Stevens just hit 100f about 1 o'clock. It's roughly 100.2 right now, still climbing.

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  29. 100.00F at Parkland, Wa
    1:18pm
    wunderground

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  30. AgWeatherNet is showing Woodinville the hottest place in the whole state right now: http://weather.wsu.edu/

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  31. 104 in shade in downtown Issaquah right now. Hot.

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  32. 99... one more degree to tie. If it hasn't gotten to 100 already between hours. Amazingly it is doing this with a WNW breeze off the Sound.

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  33. 105 at the top of the hill in View Ridge at 2:00 p.m.-- my thermometer and my neighbor's!

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  34. at 2:30 it's 101.3 in the shade on Boylston Ave & Union St.

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  35. Power just went out in Monroe for about 30 minutes. Thermometer currently says 104.

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  36. 95 at Bellingham airport at 1:53 p.m., only up one degree from an hour earlier, after rising three or four degress per hour all day.

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  37. 104 in the shade near Bitterlake in Seattle

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  38. SeattlePI.com has called it - we broke the record at 102!

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  39. Wunderground has the 98125 zip as 106.2

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  40. Official Weather Service number at Sea-Tac now stands at 100.9.

    http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/current/KSEA.html

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  41. 94.4 here in Crown Hill. Light moderating breeze. 15:00 29-Jul-2009

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  42. The higest temps I've experienced was a blast of 120 in far NW San Antonio, TX in September of 2000.

    It was about 103 degrees at our normal temperature peak of around 3pm but suddenly, this wicked wind from the west (our version of a wind from the east) blasted in and the temp jumped up.

    Humidity plummeted at the same time, thankfully.

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  43. "As long as we're already this hot," blah blah, temp wise, I'd like to see the record broken by at least two degrees, making it that much more difficult to break.

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  44. Ok, at 3:30 it's 102.7 on Boylston Ave at Union St. The portable air conditioner is going full blast and keeping it a relatively comfortable 81 inside.

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  45. just saw on komo4 that 103 was reached at SeaTac so that is the new record!

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  46. 104.7 Parkland, Wa
    5:14pm
    wunderground.

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