Hi there! Sorry for my long absence from blogging, but I’ve had a VERY stressful and drama-laden couple of months. Issues with family, with personal relationships (both my own and those of some of my friends), and a lot of anxiety concerning my upcoming plans to move to Portland (yup folks, it’s happening!).

There are some other changes to my online blogging/media presence that I plan to be making pretty soon. One of these nights I will discuss them here, but for now let’s just say that I’m going to be covering a lot of topics other than just weather, in the not-too-distant future.

For now though, let’s focus on current weather events. We have a “Mother’s Day Heatwave” setting itself up for tomorrow and Monday for the Columbia River Gorge & areas east of the Cascades. Today was very warm already, at 87 degrees in The Dalles. And tomorrow the airmass continues to warm up, with some offshore flow. This means temps near 90 (maybe even 91 or 92) both east and west of the Cascades for Mother’s Day Sunday:

Then Monday is looking to be the hottest day of all for everywhere in and east of the Gorge. The airmass heats up to about 27C / 80F at the 2,000 foot level. That ought to be good for a solid 93 or 94 at the surface!

The 850mb airmass temps will be around +17C tomorrow and +19C for Monday, which is definitely warm enough for some low 90s in mid-May.

Most alarming of all is what’s shaping up on the long-range charts. At least for places east of the Cascades, it now appears that we could have an extended period of warmer-than-normal temps throughout much of the remainder of May. Here is the 12z GFS spaghetti chart for The Dalles:

Notice how there are almost no squiggles below the red line! That means the atmosphere will remain warmer than normal for mid- to late May. Taken at face value, this chart would likely mean tons more days in the 80s and possibly a few more 90s later in the month.

This is particularly remarkable, because May has already been very warm to date. As of yesterday, DLS airport was already running about 7 degrees above normal, and the Mother’s Day heatwave will likely nudge the warm disparity even higher. If the 2nd half of May is also significantly above normal, it wouldn’t be too hard at all to set a new monthly record. (Keep in mind the warmest May of all time at the airport, in 1958, was only 5.0 degrees above normal!)