A taste of summer is underway for Western Washington as we begin to see high pressure aloft building across the region. That will send weather systems and chances of rain well to our north for days to come and allow for more sunshine and increasing high temperatures.
Seattle will see the low to mid 70s through the early weekend period with some spots possibly hitting 80° across the southern sections of the area.
The warmth appears to “spike” on Sunday around the region. The record high for Sunday in Seattle is 77° set back in 1992, but it’s worth noting that this is the coldest daily record high of the entire month of May! With a forecast high around 78°, we’ll likely remove that one from the record books.
We can expect plenty of locations south of Seattle and near the mountains to get into the 80s on Sunday with temperatures possibly staying nearly as warm into Monday before we dial back the “heat” just a little bit later next week.
However, there looks to be little chance for rainfall through the next seven days across the Northwest, except for the chance for a few mountain showers on several of the days in the next week.
But is the “rainy season” over? It appears so, and climatologically, it should end with the month of April. The May-September set of months are the five driest on average, with the next month with an average rainfall in Seattle of over three inches after the month of April is October! (July is statistically the driest month on the calendar for the Western Washington lowlands.)
The May outlook by the Climate Prediction Center calls for a better-than-normal shot of warmer and drier weather than average in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, the Northwest has the strongest “signal” for a warmer weather pattern than anywhere in the nation for the month of May.
We’ll monitor melting snowpack (from our meager winter snows) and how fuels for wildfire dry out as we go through the month, as we could contend with earlier fire starts than in typical years.
Still, most of the fires that begin in and near lowland areas are caused by humans, so as the dry weather looks to take hold, use caution to prevent anything that could start a fire!
In the meantime, enjoy the warm weather as we get a real stretch of “July” in May!