It’s looking like June will be cooler than normal
When I think of June, I think of summer. On average, however, summer doesn’t officially begin until the third week of the month. Even with that in mind, this year has definitely been an odd one when it comes to seasons. Winter weather held on in to spring, and it now looks like spring weather will leach into our summer.
The latest 30-day outlook from the Climate Prediction Center shows below-normal temperatures for the Inland Northwest through the month of June. This time of year we should be seeing highs in the lower 70s and lows in the middle 40s. Instead we have seen afternoon temperatures more than 10 degrees below normal during this first week of the month. You would think we could do better as we approach the longest day of the year, with a current sunrise before 5 a.m. and daylight lasting till nearly 9 p.m.
Fortunately, the much cooler temperatures and only spotty heavy rains have eased the flooding concerns. Though area lakes and rivers remain high, most have fallen below flood stage.
It definitely was not an overabundance of rain that caused the flooding problems in the first place. An above-average snowpack and a five-day stretch of 80-plus temperatures from May 15 through 19 can take the credit for that. Spokane and Coeur d’Alene saw significantly below-average precipitation for the month of May.
At the Spokane airport, .93 inches of rain fell last month, which was .67 inches below normal. Coeur d’Alene saw a bit more precipitation, with 1.61 inches, but still below the May average of 2.21 inches. More than a third of an inch of rain came from a May 29 thunderstorm. This was the first thunderstorm of the season in Coeur d’Alene and one of the latest “first occurrences” on record for the area.
Spokane’s first thunderstorm of the season blew through on May 31 with little fanfare. Though I’m sure the electrical components in my house are all quite happy, I am a little disappointed that I’ve only witnessed one faint distant lightning strike so far this year. Mother Nature did bring a little more excitement (if you can call it that) to folks living between Potlatch and Deary. A May 28 thunderstorm dropped hail stones as large as quarters along Highway 9, which accumulated up to 4 inches in spots.
Though June is typically the peak month for thunderstorms across the Inland Northwest, cooler than normal temperatures will likely hold down the number of stormy days.
Stormy weather got an early start, however, in the Atlantic. Hurricane season officially began on June 1, but the first tropical storm got a jump-start on the season by developing on May 31 off the coast of Belize. Tropical storm Arthur, at its worst packing winds of 40 mph, dropped heavy rains on parts of Belize, Guatemala and southeastern Mexico.
It never reached hurricane strength and had already weakened below tropical depression status by June 2. The Climate Prediction Center is forecasting an average to above-average number of hurricanes this year in the Atlantic. An average season has 11 named storms, six of which become hurricanes, and two which become major hurricanes. A storm gets a name when it reaches tropical storm status, with sustained winds of at least 39 mph. When sustained winds reach 74 mph the storm becomes a hurricane, and a major hurricane is one with winds greater than 111 mph. Though Atlantic hurricanes do not directly affect us here in the Northwest, the storms’ potential affects on the cost of gasoline will have us all monitoring the tropics this summer.