Karl's Weather Discussions

I sincerely hope you are all safe during this mother of all heatwaves in the Pacific Northwest!  Today is the third consecutive day that PDX will set an all-time record high temperature. Saturday we hit 108 ⁰ F, which beat the record of 107 from August 1981 and July 1965.  I was in town all day and it was truly miserable, especially given that dewpoints were in the mid to upper 60s for most of the evening and night. Then yesterday…

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For the past several days, there has been much speculation about the upcoming heatwave for the last weekend of June.  Would it be just “really really hot,” or would this prove to be the MOTHER OF ALL HEATWAVES for the Pacific Northwest? Now, two days before the event begins, we appear to have an answer:  Yes, the June 2021 heatwave will probably be the hottest temperatures that northwest Oregon and SW Washington have ever seen (at least in the last couple…

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Welcome to Summer 2021, or at least the meteorological definition.  There’s a longstanding confusion in the United States, as to which calendar format we should use for  defining seasons.  Several decades ago it was far more common to see the “astronomical” summer used in practice by media and popular culture.  That begins near June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere, and ends around September 22.  However in recent years, the meteorological summer- June 1 to August 31 -is gaining more acceptance…

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