Greetings, weather folks!  I’m back from my five-day road trip to Southern Oregon and Northern California.  As a kid I got to drive through the area several times during family visits to relatives in the Bay Area.  But I never got the chance to really explore the region…until now.  Since this is a weather blog and not a travel journal, I’ll keep it short and sweet.  Here are the highlights:

1.  A visit to Grants Pass to reconnect with an old friend.
2. The Oregon Vortex.
3. The extremely scenic Applegate Valley.
4. A hike on Upper Table Rock north of Medford.
5. Ashland and Lithia Park.
6. Mount Ashland, up to the ski area.
7. The site of the devastating Mill Fire in Weed, California.
8. Several waterfalls in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.
9. Whiskeytown Lake west of Redding (cover photo).
10. Lots of photos of palm trees and other warm-climate flora in Redding.

Now I’m back in Vancouver and the weather is…unusually warm to say the least.  PDX airport has hit at least 88 degrees today, making it the warmest October day in 34 years.  The lower sun angle makes these temperatures feel especially nasty, since the sun is hitting you sideways.  By the way…September 2022 clocked in at 69.5F, beating the 2014 record by a whopping 1.9 degrees!

And the summer-like weather shows no sign of abating.  For the last few days, THIS is what the long-range models have looked like:

Temperatures at the 5,000 foot level are expected to hover between 15 and 17 degrees Celsius for the next 7-8 days at least.  In contrast, normal 850mb temps in early October are around 8-10 C.  Models are showing a chance of rain by the time we hit mid-October, but….they’ve been showing long-range precip repeatedly for several weeks now, and every time it has fallen apart as the timeframe approaches.  The CPC outlook for 8-14 days out does not look encouraging if you want it cool and wet:

So our extremely warm and dry fall is expected to continue until further notice.  This isn’t unheard of, but it is very unusual – only about once every 10-20 years do we make it to mid-October without a single soaking rain event in Portland-Vancouver.

Keep in mind that the late-summer party can’t go on forever in our climate; this isn’t southern California after all!  Eventually the weakening sun and long nights will catch up with us – and even if strong ridging remains nearby, we will start to see valley inversions & cooler airmasses east of the Cascades settle in.  That process is already underway, but it really accelerates as we move into later October and early November.  By the time we reach Halloween, getting above 70 degrees is a bit of a struggle.

So if you’re sick and tired of the endless summer warmth, it will come to an end sooner or later.  But if you enjoy it, we have at least 7-10 more days of sunshine and 70s/80s to look forward to!

Karl