As noted in an earlier blog, the end of July and first week of August is typically the driest period of the year. The time for outdoor weddings.
And for Seattle, today is historically the driest day of the year.
Going against climatology, a relatively wet weather system moved in today and the wetness is not over, as shown by the NWS radar imagery around 8 PM Monday (see below). At this time, some healthy rainbands were moving in from the northwest.
The air feels "sticky" with high dewpoints (into the lower 60s), resulting from rain falling into relatively warm air.
So far Seattle Tacoma Airport has only received .13 inches, less than the previous record of .17 inches. But the day is not over yet! Decent rain in the Cascades and mountains of NE Washington.
Things should dry out after tomorrow (Tuesday) and temperatures will move back to normal and then a bit above-normal levels (highs in the low 80s in much of western WA). Today was coolest day in a long time for the region, with only a handful of stations getting to 90F in southeast Washington.
My next blog will describe how this year has been of quite a few grass fire events but relatively few forest fires.
More rain is predicted for the next day (see forecasts for the 24 h ending 5 PM Tuesday) and the influence of this rain and much cooler than normal temperatures will be a substantial reduction in wildfire threat for the next week over much of the region. As shown in the forecast map below, northwest Washington and the western slopes of of the regional terrain get most of the additional precipitation.
The precipitation and cool conditions have substantially lessened fire danger (see official estimates below, green is good). Western Washington is in good shape for the next week, with drier conditions returns later in the week over the eastern side of the Cascades).
My next blog will describe how this year has been of quite a few grass fire events but relatively few forest fires.
This does appear to have been the wettest 29th of July in the history of the Bellingham area. The 0.80" (and counting) that as fallen today destroyed the previous record of 0.40" in 1955. Looking at sites that have longer periods of record, the Bellingham 2N NWS COOP station (POR began 1915) reported 0.5" on 7/29/1955 and the Marietta 3NNW NWS COOP station (POR began 1913) reported 0.56" on 7/29/1933. This event is strikingly similar to the midsummer deluge the Bellingham area received late last July - a true 100-year event.
ReplyDeleteWe've received 1.20" here a few miles northeast of Arlington as of 6:30 Tuesday morning, what a blessing!
ReplyDeleteAny way you can tell us where to view that rainfall totals map where it can be zoomed in? It is pretty difficult to read with all the numbers clustered in onm top of each other in the more populated areas.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that Seattle averages 4 rainy days in July; I doubt we'll hit that in July 2024. The past couple days have been very cool but the nights have been warmer than average, presumably due to the cloud cover. My GUESS is that we'll wrap it up with a July 2024 that was warmer and drier than average, at least in Seattle, but not a record-breaker. What are your expectations, Cliff?
ReplyDeleteIt's good to see summer making a strong comeback with a long stretch of 80's on the way.
ReplyDeleteFor Eastern Washington, this period of cooler temperatures and higher humidity has been the best feature of this storm with regards to fire danger. Rain amounts, however, even from just east of the Cascade crest and throughout the rest of the east side, were insignificant, less than .05" at most stations. After such a dry period as we have been through and with another warm period coming up which will quickly dry out anything that did get a bit wet, I don't think that the fire danger has been reduced over here and it will quickly return to the levels we saw before this storm.
ReplyDeleteYesterday (7/29) we got a sprinkle in the morning, and again later in the day some light rain and when I headed to the store late yesterday afternoon, wore a parka shell and it was not even light rain, maybe a spittle or so, but that's it. So far today, been dry, but cloudy at 2:41PM.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the Chelan/Sawtooth Range does not get much of this.
ReplyDeleteBLI ended up with 1.02" for the event. This is now the rainiest July since 2014 and one of only 5 Julys since 2000 to receive at least an inch of precipitation at that location.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting aspect of the recent midsummer storm was the attenuation of solar energy reaching the surface. At my location in Bellingham, I measured a total of about 8.5 MJ/m^2 of solar irradiance on 7/29 and 7/30 combined - each ~4.26 MJ/m^2 per day. On a typical day during high summer, I would expect daily solar radiant flux of ~25 MJ/m^2 at my location.
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