September 17, 2021

Forecast: September 17th, 2021

By Matthew Charchenko

It’s been a dry and relatively tame second half of the summer in Seattle, but fall is making quite the entrance today as an atmospheric river points towards the Pacific Northwest. Light rain is falling across most of Western Washington right now with the exception of a few locations in the Olympic rain shadow north of Seattle. Expect light rain to continue through most of the day along with some periods of drier conditions, but the tame weather starts to change as we head into tonight.

A potent front will push through the region late Friday night bringing with it a period of heavy rain, so if you are out and about tonight be sure to dig those raincoats and rain boots out of summertime storage!

While many of us will be rejoicing in the drenching rains after a dry summer, there is reason for concern as our wind speeds increase tonight. The first windstorm of the season typically has a greater impact on the region due to the trees still sporting their summertime leaves which act like sails catching the wind. So while the wind speeds themselves wont be terribly strong for the region, we’ll still see some scattered power outages and tree damage as this first wind storm takes down some dead or leaf filled branches.

The tree damage may also be more significant than usual this time due to our historic heatwave in June and dry summer putting additional stress and damage on our trees. Overall winds are expected to gust between 35-55mph for the NW interior and the coast with lesser winds of 30-40mph in the central and south sound tonight.

By Sunday morning most locations west of the Cascades will have seen over an inch of much needed rain with higher totals along the coast and in the mountains!

Reach forecaster Matthew Charchenko at theuwdawgcast@uw.edu and on Twitter @mcharchenko

STORM HEADLINES	CURRENT DROUGHT CONDITIONS