Seattle is so hot right now: Tuesday breaks warm weather record
Feb 9, 2016, 5:18 PM | Updated: 5:26 pm
AP
It might have had a foggy start, but that didn’t stop Seattle temps from dramatically rising Tuesday.
So high, in fact, that Feb. 9 became the warmest day of the year — so far — in Seattle.
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According to KIRO 7’s Chief Meteorologist Morgan Palmer, the temperature reached 62 degrees Fahrenheit at 2 p.m. at SeaTac. That is the historic record high for the date of Feb. 9. And Palmer expected early on that temps would rise a few more degrees before the day was done.
By 3:50 p.m., the temperature reached 63 degrees, breaking the record for the date, according to The Seattle Weather Blog.
Record-breaking high of 63 degrees in #Seattle today. Previous mark for warmest Feb. 9 was 62, in 1968.
— Seattle Weather Blog (@KSeattleWeather) February 9, 2016
That makes Feb. 9 the warmest day since late October.
The morning fog may have fooled early commuters, but as UW Atmospheric Science Professor Cliff Mass explains, Feb. 9 was not only warm, it was…wait for it…
“I was going to call it ‘Inverzilla,’ but perhaps that is getting old,” Mass wrote on his blog. “But the truth is that today we have one of the strongest inversions I have ever seen here in Seattle.”
Maybe he should have gone with “Invergeddon” or “Inverpocalypse Now.” Either way, the “inversion” at play is the difference between the temperature close to the ground and the warmer temps at higher elevations.
So it might be cold while driving along I-5. But atop the Space Needle, Mass notes, it is quite a different story.
On Tuesday it was a 23-degree increase at a difference of 1,640 feet.
“Can you imagine taking a hike up one of our foothill peaks?” Mass said. “It would be amazing. Cold at the bottom and sweating at the top!”
“The inversion is so strong because temperatures have warmed up aloft, a very strong offshore pressure gradient developed (producing strong subsidence/compression warming on the western slopes), and cool/foggy air is trapped at low levels,” he wrote.
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