After a few cooler days with some rain showers, temperatures will rise sharply across Washington on Wednesday and Thursday with plenty of sunshine and high pressure aloft building in. Highs will be in the 70s in many spots west of the Cascades on Wednesday and even more spots in the upper 70s to low 80s on Thursday.
It’ll be even warmer and somewhat muggy east of the Cascades by Thursday, and this will set the stage for a possible eruption of thunderstorms!
The culprit will be an upper-level area of low pressure to our south, and while this is currently taking our rain chances away for a few days, a disturbance (possibly several) zipping around the northeast side of the low by Thursday will bring energy for thunderstorms to our state.
As of Tuesday night’s forecasts, it looks like the threat for thunderstorms Thursday and Thursday night is greatest from the Cascades eastward across central and eastern Washington. In fact, the Storm Prediction Center has much of the central and eastern part of Washington in a “marginal” risk for severe thunderstorms on Thursday and Thursday night. While “marginal” doesn’t sound significant and is the lowest threat of severe thunderstorms on the SPC risk scale, even that level of severe threat is unusual for Washington!
(A thunderstorm is deemed “severe” if it produces winds of 58mph or greater, hail of one inch diameter or larger, or a tornado.)
Thunderstorms by Thursday afternoon could produce lightning without significant wetting rain, increasing the risk for spot fires. Also, hail and damaging winds are the greatest threats from these storms.
West of the Cascades, the threat of thunderstorms is far lower, though we could see some lightning strikes on the eastern horizon after dark as the storm chances along and east of the crest will continue into Thursday night. But for the Western Washington lowlands, we’ll just watch for a few rain showers Thursday night and Friday with sharply cooler temperatures topping out only in the 50s to low 60s Friday.
We’ll certainly update this threat for storms in the Cascades and east of the mountains through the week on KIRO 7. Be sure to download the KIRO 7 Pinpoint Weather app for the latest forecast updates and Pinpoint Stormtracker radar.
©2026 Cox Media Group
