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No, it is HOT and NASTY on the Olympic Peninsula, & the Kitsap a Peninsula, yesterday was the worst on the OP, and YES, there are MASSIVE fires in British Columbia, and all that smoke is going HERE. Believe people who live in it.
I lived in San Diego in October 2007...there were massive fires all around the city, in the canyons, the suburbs, leaping the freeways, in the mountains. It was brutally hot with smoke & ash everywhere. It was terrifying. It has been like that here this week in Washington. British Columbia is having major issues with their forestry practices, & the consequences are happening in the PNW of the USA. Yes, global warming is real.
Ruth4Truth lives in New Mexico; I don't purport to know what the weather is there.
I don't know where Ruth is, but to be fair, the temperatures fluctuated wildly over the last few days in the region. Northern and Western parts of the OP were substantially hotter than the very NE part of the peninsula, Whidbey, Fidalgo, the San Juans, and parts of Skagit and Whatcom Counties close to the water. So far in Bellingham we've escaped the brutal heat entirely- so far. Not the smoke, though. Interestingly, there's even one burning in the Chuckanuts, but we can't smell a thing!
I don't know where Ruth is, but to be fair, the temperatures fluctuated wildly over the last few days in the region. Northern and Western parts of the OP were substantially hotter than the very NE part of the peninsula, Whidbey, Fidalgo, the San Juans, and parts of Skagit and Whatcom Counties close to the water. So far in Bellingham we've escaped the brutal heat entirely- so far. Not the smoke, though. Interestingly, there's even one burning in the Chuckanuts, but we can't smell a thing!
This, exactly. Even within Port Townsend, there are microclimates, which had significant temp disparity from one to another. The parts of town near the water were a cool mid-70's, while neighborhoods that were closer to the geographic center of town were 80+. Nobody along the north shore needed A/C; they were very comfortable.
It's impossible to generalize, not only for the entire peninsula, which is a vast and varied area, but even for the town of Pt T., especially when you have weird anomalies going on, like the current one.
Much Cooler than average this summer in Georgia ! I looked at the forecast for Seattle for the week, High 80's to Low 70's for highs, is that really that hot for you guys in Early August?
Much Cooler than average this summer in Georgia ! I looked at the forecast for Seattle for the week, High 80's to Low 70's for highs, is that really that hot for you guys in Early August?
I grew up in Atlanta and now live in Olympia. I looked at the weather channel app on my phone at Cumming's temps this week and was like "WTF??? that's 10 degrees cooler than us!"
Much Cooler than average this summer in Georgia ! I looked at the forecast for Seattle for the week, High 80's to Low 70's for highs, is that really that hot for you guys in Early August?
It is and it isn't. Temps don't get as high here as they do in other parts of the country - most of the time - but when they do go to 90 and over, it feels hot to us because we're not acclimated to those temps. I know I feel too hot when the temp goes over 70, yet I had a friend who lived in Florida and told me she puts a sweater on at 76 because that temp feels chilly to her. It all depends on what you're used to.
I've heard lately that a few dry months during the summer was normal for this area. But I was reading a book the other day called the 'Onions in the Stew' by Betty MacDonald who lived on Vashon Island (an island between Seattle and the Kitsap Peninsula). She was talking about the things they experienced while living on the island and one of those things was "...the driest summer (that wonderful one)" which makes me think by her phrasing that dry summers here weren't the norm during the 40s.
As it is, with the dry spell the Puget Sound is having, both Seattle and Bremerton have broken their records for the longest dry spell without rain in history.
The humidity has been up, but 20% should not make that much difference. Granted, 108 with 20% is hot, but that is still considered low humidity. I'm developing a curiosity about barometric pressure and dew points as they relate to our experience of the heat despite the low humidity.
I'm woefully ignorant on the subject. There's probably a weather geek on here who can explain it to me with ease.
I wouldn't call myself a weather geek, but as a pilot and an old geezer I'm somewhat aware of weather phenom.
Dew point is directly related to both air temperature and humidity, as the dew point is the temperature at which the air can no longer suspend the moisture (humidity) and it turns to fog/cloud. The higher the humidity, the lower the dew point, so dew point doesn't make it feel hotter, it's just a measurement of the heat and humidity. I was in Iowa a few years ago when both the relative humidity and temperature were in the upper 90s. It was stifling! I talked briefly with a fellow traveler at a rest stop just outside Sioux City (far NW Iowa) who told me it was the hottest he'd ever felt, and he was from Dallas.
I've never heard of barometric pressure relating directly to heat, as in, "Wow, the barometric pressure is so high I can't stand the heat." A high pressure area usually has "better weather" and is associated with clear skies and drier air. It's also "compressed" air, so to speak, so should hold more heat, and the lack of cloud cover would allow the sun to heat the ground more.
However, high pressure areas have "sinking air" -- air that sinks from high altitude to the ground and spreads out, and higher air is cooler air. Therefore, I'd be inclined to believe that high pressure areas generally feel cooler overall. Daytime recorded temperatures could be a bit higher, but nighttime temps should be lower, and the humidity should be lower. Dew point (if I'm correct about all this) would be at a higher temperature due to the lower relative humidity.
The main thing with regard to weather, however, is where the high was formed. If it was formed over arctic climates, as are the majority of highs we see here, it will contain cooler air.
Take this with a grain of salt, as I'm not a weather expert. If I'm wrong with any (or all) of this, I hope someone will correct me for both of us.
I spent the last week in/around Medford, OR where I saw highs of 112F. I think they were forecasting highs of 114F. I went out for breakfast one morning and was talking with the owner of the restaurant and one of his regulars. He said the record high for Medford was 117F recorded in '58 or '59. We left Medford to camp at Howard Prairie Lake where the high was around 95F, still hot but cool compared to 110F!
I looked at the weather on my iPhone and saw that my hometown in Wyoming was experiencing highs around 70. On my way home yesterday, at around 2 p.m., I glanced at the outside temp gauge on my car and noted it was 65F. Nice to vacation, but also nice to be home!
And over on this side of the Atlantic we've had one of our coldest August days on record today, with a high of 60!
Evidence of a sluggish Gulf Stream? A hint of what's to come, as Greenland dumps more ice into the north Atlantic?
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