Recent Cool, Damp Slump Anything But Summerlike

The Rainy City has lived up to its moniker for most of the past 10 days, raising concerns that summer is over and fall has begun.

But experts say summer likely will be back.

“Normally the best weather of the year is late July and early August,” said Cliff Mass, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.

“This is unusual. The chances of it remaining unusual for the rest of the summer I think would be pretty slight,” he said.

Doubt is creeping in among some Seattle-area residents, who cite record lows of 63 on Aug. 6 - the coldest Seafair Sunday in city history - and Aug. 10, and highs well below average since then.

And there are no guarantees.

“It’s like flipping a coin,” Mass said.

There was a brief respite Sunday, when the sun appeared and Seattle recorded a high of 72 degrees. But that was below the August average of 76 degrees, and temperatures dropped again Monday. Clouds and showers were forecast for the end of the week.

Clouds and rain have plagued much of Eastern Washington in recent days as well, raising concerns about the summer wheat harvest. Temperatures are averaging about 5 degrees below normal and Spokane’s 67-degree high Sunday was the lowest in 36 years, said meteorologist John Livingston with the National Weather Service.

Southeast and south-central Washington, meanwhile, are logging highs in the 90s.

“How come?” grumped UW spokesman L.G. Blanchard of the hot summer days in Walla Walla and Yakima. “Don’t we pay the same taxes they do?”

Brooding skies set in over Seattle after a sunny, 85-degree Aug. 4. There was a trace of rain Aug. 5 and “it’s rained off and on since then,” said weather service meteorologist Rick Steed.

“We’ve just got kind of a crummy weather pattern set up over us here. Cool and crummy,” he said. “It’s definitely an exceptionally cool August.”

Some agency forecasters predict the worst, Steed said.

“It’s easier to say what is happening is going to persist,” he said.

“That’s not the forecast I would want to make,” Steed said. “I’m more optimistic than that.”

But he declined to chance a long-term forecast, noting that current technology does not lend itself to that.

The dank past 10 days are in the normal range, Mass said.

“We’re seeing the colder side” of that range, which is made up of “some years that are cool, some years that are warmer than others,” he said.

He noted changes in the “upper-level flow pattern,” which has been “trough-y,” producing warmer-thannormal weather in the eastern United States and cooler weather in the Northwest.

If temperatures around the country are averaged, this summer’s weather is “pretty normal, really.”

Bottom line? It’s unlikely that summer is over in the Northwest.

“There’s no reason to think that it is,” Mass said.

And if August stays dreary, there’s always next month.

“September has become one of the most dependable months of the year in the past 10 years,” Mass said.