May 30, 2024

Late Sunsets and Atmospheric Rivers 🌇☔

By Joseph Renalds, Alec Weise, and Neve Lin

Happy Thursday Huskies!

After a relentless streak of dreary days, the sun will make a quick visit. Today will feature morning clouds breaking off to plentiful sunshine. High pressure will stick with us today and tomorrow before a series of systems impact the area. Temperatures will remain pretty far below average as they have been since our warm up in the first half of May.

There is a weak ridge moving into the PNW from later today into Friday. Temperatures will rise, peaking at 65 today with lows in the mid 40s in the night time. We will be seeing more clouds throughout Friday and chances of rain throughout the later end of the weekend. Temperatures will linger in the 60s with calm winds. 

As we start finals week, the weather will be very conducive for locking in for the last few days. An atmospheric river will move into the Pacific Northwest beginning on Sunday. Yep you read that right, an atmospheric river in June. These setups are something we are much more used to seeing in the autumn and winter months, so this is somewhat unusual for this time of the year. 

Out of curiosity, I looked at some weather records for the SeaTac Airport station. In the month of June, the station has only recorded 10 days with a daily rainfall amount greater than one inch from the recording period beginning all the way back in 1945. We are very likely to see an eleventh day added to the record books on Monday, but this does depend on the timing of the storm’s arrival. 

Long story short, make sure you are prepared to deal with very soggy and breezy weather to start our week of weather whiplash.

By the end of finals week though a strong ridge will begin to build over the Pacific Northwest. This will bring us our warmest temperatures of the season as a reward for all our hard work. We will bring you more details soon on what temperatures we could see around western Washington.

Have you been noticing the increasingly late sunsets? Well starting this Saturday, Seattle will experience its first 9pm sunset. This will be a great way to start off the month which we hope will feature more summery conditions.

Have a great rest of your week Huskies; you’re almost there! Despite this sunshine, we will still fall short of our average high temp of 69 degrees – enjoy the nice weather while it lasts!