WASHINGTON — High pressure aloft combined with wind flow nearer the surface will serve to largely shut off cooling from the Pacific for days beginning Friday. An Extreme Heat Warning is in effect for the lowlands and for the Cascade foothills and adjacent valleys.
Hot Saturday with mid 90s south of Puget Sound and in the Cascade valleys and foothills. For Seattle, the forecast is for 90 degrees — not quite to the daily record of 91, but Olympia will set another record high with about 95 on Saturday. Across the north and coast, it will still be well into the 80s.
Sunday is just about as hot areawide with plenty of 80s and south of Seattle and near the Cascades, we’ll be in the 90s.
East of the Cascades, we’ll see weekend highs in the upper 90s to low 100s.
Starting Monday, we’ll lose a degree or two each day through about Thursday but that still puts much of Western Washington lowlands well into the 80s. In addition, with each successive hot day, overnight cooling won’t be enough to temper the discomfort for those without air conditioning.
There looks to be more relief from the heat by the end of next week, though temperatures will likely still be a bit warmer than average.
Fire danger will ramp up over the weekend and into next week, and a Red Flag Warning has been issued for the Cascades, Olympics, and adjacent foothills.
As for air quality, there is very little smoke emanating from the Bear Gulch Fire at present and air quality is good region-wide. We could see more smoke produced from this fire as we go through the next few days.
Also, smoke could be a problem from any other fires that start as the rains of nearly a week ago will no longer be of any help in the coming days as the ground is parched once again. We may get some elevated haze to push into the area tomorrow, thanks to the offshore wind pattern. Air quality is still mostly projected to be good.
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