May 29, 2021

Forecast: May 29th, 2021

By Preston Donion

Happy last Saturday of May, Huskies!

As we wrap up the fifth month and the academic year, things look to heat up in more ways than one! I know I’m hitting crunch time in my classes and I’m sure you are too, but let’s not focus on that here. The other big warm-up is far more enjoyable!

Today looks to be a solid spring Saturday, with a good chance of us cracking 70° and breaking a 12-day streak of below average temperatures. It’s been a while since we’ve had a May this cold (2012 was the last time we were below average!), but we can’t ignore the little effort at catching up that we’ll see over the next few days.

Each day will get warmer through Wednesday, before our temperatures come back down to normal and June’s favorite accessory, rain, arrives. It’s a bit funny to me how strong our association of June with subpar weather is, as “Juneuary” and “June Gloom” have become recurring themes, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer than these first four days to see how 2021 falls into that tradition. Let us know what you expect for this go-around!

As you can see in the map above, the experts favor a warmer June and summer as a whole, so we’ll have to be extra careful to prevent fires as much as we can when outdoors in the coming months. No one wants another smoke season!

Because I love almanac data, let’s take a quick peek at our odds of setting a record this week. We can expect our best shots at breaking the 80° mark to be Tuesday and Wednesday, and a look at the current “high scores” tells me we won’t be making history: We reached 94° on June 1st and 2nd in 1970! So even though this week’s climb will take us to the highest temperature of the year thus far, it won’t be enough to stop some records from turning 51. Enjoy the wonderful weather (and the less wonderful that lies towards the end of the week), and good luck on those exams and projects! We’ll be back tomorrow and I’ll be back in a week!

Reach forecaster Preston Donion at theuwdawgcast@uw.edu. Twitter: @PrestonDonion

TODAY’S SKYCAST	7 DAY OUTLOOK