Temperatures to (finally) reach 90 this weekend
Aug 3, 2012, 10:53 AM | Updated: 12:43 pm
If you’re a disgruntled Northwesterner who craves the sun,
you’re in luck this weekend.
Temperatures are expected to hit 90 degrees; the first
time
since Aug. 16, 2010. You read that correctly, it hasn’t
reached 90 at Sea-Tac in two years. It reached 90 or
higher
six days that summer: Check
the charts.
Last summer the hottest it got was about 87 degrees.
Ted Buehner with the National Weather Service in Seattle
says Sunday will be the warmer of the two days with areas
south of Olympia really heating up. However, Bellevue
could see temps at 92.
So Seattle’s 90 degrees feel hot, maybe hotter than 90
degrees in San Diego, right? Buehner says wrong. It
still is just 90 degrees and our humidity is nothing to
sweat over.
“Here, we struggle to get our dew points above 60,”
explains Buehner. “It’s not nearly as humid as places east
of the Rockies.”
He recalled a recent visit to Washington D.C. where the
thermometer said 104 and the dew point was above 70.
Basically, it was like swimming with your clothes on.
Here, Buehner says it usually feels warmer to us when the
air dries out. It happens when a loft of warm air sits
over us and pushes down. The air warms up and dries out as
it descends to our elevation. It also gets warm when we
lose our on-shore flow from the Pacific Ocean.
Right now, the air is flowing from the Cascade
Mountains.
In a nutshell, 90 degrees feels so hot in the Puget Sound
area because we’re not used to it.
If you’re disgusted by this warm weather news, you don’t
have to wait long for the clouds to return. The off-shore
flow from the Pacific that we’re accustomed to is rolling
back in late Sunday-early Monday. The change may mean a
few thunderstorms in the Cascades.
The hot weather lovers can follow the warm air over the
mountains to Eastern Washington early next week.
In the meanwhile, find yourself a place with air
conditioning. Buehner says 15 percent of Puget Sound
area homes are outfitted with the cool air systems. That
number has risen in the past 10 years with new
construction.
