Good morning! I imagine many of us in the Pacific Northwest are feeling refreshed and relieved today; the big heat wave that dominated all of late July is finally over! Yesterday August 1, the last of the hot air was on its way out of The Dalles; we had one final “hot” day with a high temp of 97.

Put it all together, and since July 22 we have had:

11 consecutive days with max temps at/above 95F;
10 of those days were 98F or hotter;
7 days were 100F or hotter; and
The hottest day of all for DLS airport was Saturday, July 28 – a searing 107 degrees.

Unfortunately (for weather geeks), a 98-degree day in the middle of the event prevented us from getting more than 5 consecutive 100s. Still…when you look at the overall duration and the number of scorcher days, this was probably the worst heat wave in the eastern Columbia Gorge since late June/early July 2015.

When you combine with the somewhat shorter heatwave in mid-July, the month of July ended up at 78.6 degrees F, a full 4.6 degrees above the 30-year norms. It was the 3rd hottest July in more than 70 years of airport history…but the 2nd hottest if you look only at the daily high temps, which averaged out to 94.6F. However, our overall high temps were still 2 degrees cooler – and mean temps 3 degrees cooler! – than the hottest July on record (1985).

With 12 days at or above 100 degrees F, we tied the record for number of scorcher days in July; 1996 also had 12 days. The only month with more triple-digit heat was August 1977, with an unprecedented 14 days.

You may wonder why I’m using both 95 degrees and 100 degrees as a heatwave threshold. My reasoning goes like this: in our climate in July or August, we really need to hit 100 degrees for a couple days before it feels like a real heat “event”. That said, it’s also very common to have a fair number of 95-99 degree days before, after or in between the 100+ days. Even the big 2015 heatwave had a few upper 90s thrown in the mix! Indeed, the main reason July 1985 was so extremely hot, is that it had so many mid/upper 90s in between the 100s.

So…a few days in the upper 90s on their own don’t really feel all that horrible. But when they occur in the midst of 100s, they serve to prolong the heat and misery.

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Moving on to August….originally the plan was for the entire first 10+ days of the month to be quite mild for what is normally one of the hottest parts of the summer. Cool troughs along the West Coast were to bring us a bunch of days 5-10 degrees below normal, which for The Dalles means high temps only in the low 80s. There were even supposed to be a few rain showers west of the Cascade crest!

But now the weather models have flip-flopped yet again on us. Instead, we’re set to get about 4 “mild” days (today through Sunday), then we flip back to hot again by the middle of next week!

YIKES! Another scorching hot airmass in the Columbia Basin. This would mean at least a day or two in the 104-106 range for places like The Dalles. Fortunately, this heatwave is looking a lot more short-lived. Models show us cooling down again as we get toward the following weekend.

That said, I would have preferred it if we “saved” any remaining summer heat for late August, or maybe even the first week of September. We haven’t had a big heatwave in the last 10-12 days of August, in 20 years. September 2011 had a record-setting heat event toward the 2nd week of the month, and last year we could have seen a historic heatwave at the very beginning of September…except that too much smoke from regional wildfires blocked out the sun. And once you get past August 20, the same 100-degree temps in the daytime are likely to be accompanied by cooler nights.

We will have to watch the models carefully the next several days, to get an idea of what might be coming later in the month.

Whatever happens…stay cool and hydrated, because I have a strong feeling this summer is far from over!