Seattle primed for rain after record-setting heat over weekend
May 13, 2019, 5:23 PM
(AP)
(AP)
After 16 straight days without rain and record-setting heat over the last four days, the Puget Sound region will get a much-needed reprieve this week.
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Seattle broke warm weather records for three consecutive days between Thursday, May 9, and Saturday, May 11, with temperatures getting as high as 86 degrees over that period.
That blistering heat will soon come to an end, though, beginning with a lengthy stretch of rain that kicks off on Tuesday. According to UW climate scientist Cliff Mass, that’s a trend that will prevail across the entire U.S. West Coast, thanks to an upcoming push of marine air.
“The second half of the month promises to be cool and wet in Washington and Oregon, with northern California swamped by highly unusual amounts of rain,” Mass said in a Monday blog post.
Current forecasts for the area call for rain every day between at least Tuesday and Saturday this week.
Figuring out wildfire season
Recent warm weather has sparked fear that wildfires will be especially prevalent this year. Mass classifies those concerns as “not realistic.”
“At this point, it is premature to predict an early or more severe fire season for our region,” he noted, citing “plenty of precipitation” in Eastern Washington over the winter months, and an early melt of snowpack that he qualifies as “not that serious.”
That runs counter to what state officials have been saying, with Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz calling the recent start to wildfire season “unprecedented.”
“So far to date we’ve had 170 fires in Washington state,” Franz told KIRO 7 TV last Friday. “Fifty-three percent of them west of the Cascades and I have to stress that is a new phenomenon. We’re not used to having that many fires west of the Cascades and we’re not used to having that many fires early in the season.”
Recently, the state Legislature approved a record $50 million in its budget to combat wildfires, while Congress and President Trump OKed another $2 billion over the next eight years.
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