By Gordon McCraw, Meteorologist for the Tillamook County Pioneer
Welcome to Fall everyone, it snuck in Sunday morning, pushing the Summer of 2024 into the history books. The days will continue to get shorter, and the average temperatures decrease while the chance of rain increases.
We continue to be under the influence of a high pressure ridge but we did have a weak disturbance ride over the top of the ridge then drop southward across the area. This did little other than to give us some patchy fog and mist this morning. This ridge built back stronger today, so we saw a fair and mild day with the high temperature in the low 70s. Tonight, we have partly cloudy skies, maybe that patchy morning fog with calm winds, the low temperature dropping to near 57.
Tomorrow morning, we can expect some patchy dense fog as the ridge continues to build bringing sunny skies after the fog clears, with light northwesterly winds, that high peaking at 77 as the ridge axis moves directly over the top of us. By Tuesday night the ridge has continued to push eastward as a trough of low pressure digs southward, as it moves southeastward towards the coast. This should bring increasing cloudiness, and with calm winds, some patchy fog is again possible, the overnight low near 55.
An approaching system brings a chance of rain Wednesday morning then a chance of scattered showers Wednesday afternoon. We see light southerly winds that morning followed by southwesterly winds 5-10 in the afternoon, the afternoon temperatures only up around 63. The amount of rain is in question as the air ahead of the system is very dry but amounts of ¼ to ½” are possible. We continue to have some showers around Wednesday night with an upper level trough moving over the area, the low temperature dropping to near 49.
By Thursday we see the trough sliding eastward with a low pressure area up in the Gulf of Alaska. The combination leads to weak high pressure, in what will pretty much be a zonal, or west to east flow. Unfortunately, we do see a low pressure area developing offshore of British Columbia that will move eastward, this pattern does put us on the wet side of the low. What all this means for us is…we see a slight chance of rain in the afternoon Thursday with that chance increasing by Thursday night that persists into Friday morning. High temperatures around 65, lows in the upper 40s to low 50s.
Just in time for the weekend, mostly sunny skies return with highs near 65, mostly clear nights, lows near 46. The long range models suggest the next shot of rain isn’t until later next week.