Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Update: Thursday Bringing Hot Weather & A Chance of Thunderstorms

No FastCast in this blog. Find the updated forecast at weather.gov and enter your location.

Thursday will be a hot day across the state, especially in Eastern Washington, where hazardous heat is expected. The HRRR forecast for temperatures at 4 PM Thursday are below.


Expect highs in the lowlands to reach the upper 80s to low 90s, except in the mid 80s near the water. The Vancouver BC/Bellingham area, the foothills, Portland area, and Olympia area will reach the mid 90s. Eastern Washington will be very hot, with highs in the low to mid 100s, and into the upper 100s in the Tri Cities area.

Higher than normal dewpoints due to monsoon moisture will bring a muggy feel to the air on Thursday. It will be mostly cloudy on Thursday as well, due to the monsoon moisture.

There is still a chance of thunderstorms on Thursday, mainly over the Cascades, Olympics, and Coast Range in Oregon. The UW forecast for CAPE (instability) is below.


Increased instability, with CAPE values of 200-1000, is expected in the Coast Range, Olympics, part of the Willamette Valley, and the Cascades. 

The NAM model is more aggressive with instability, as seen below.


The NAM shows the same areas of instability, just elevated. CAPE values on the NAM are in the 2000-4000 range in the mountains and the 500-1500 range in the lowlands. 

The bottom line is that there is a chance of thunderstorms, particularly over area mountains, on Thursday afternoon and evening. These thunderstorms will likely have little rain, and there is a high chance of potential fire starts. 

Stay tuned on Twitter and via the local news stations’ weather pages.

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