Karl Bonner's Weather Blog

(sorry, I don’t have a good fresh photo of the red smoky sun!) As you can probably tell, it’s been a very tough summer for much of the Western U.S., and even parts of Canada. So far there have been five big wildfires within local range of The Dalles, burning well over 100,000 acres. Multiple conflagrations of historic magnitude, have blazed throughout Northern California. Now we are seeing haze from fires in British Columbia and Alberta, brought into Washington &…

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Well…here we are again folks, in the middle of heatwave #3. Weather models the past couple weeks have really struggled with the long-range forecast. Back during our lengthy late July inferno, there was a strong signal that we would have a mild-to-cool pattern for the first 7-10 days of August. But instead, yesterday Tuesday it was 106 degrees F outside in The Dalles! There’s also a lot of haze outside from wildfires in California and southern Oregon. Most of it…

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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…

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It’s sure been a hot July in the Pacific Northwest, including the Columbia River Gorge! Here in The Dalles, our temperatures for the first 17 days of the month are running about 4.0 degrees F above normal. The warmth is especially concentrated in the high temps, which are 6 degrees above normal. We’ve also had a major heatwave from the 12th through 16th, with 5 triple digit days: 102, 101, 101, 105, 103. Yesterday the 17th, a strong west wind…

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It’s the most boring time of year weatherwise, but thought I’d try to find something interesting to chime in about. First of all…our June in The Dalles was slightly warmer than average, but definitely not hot. Averaged high of 81.4 and averaged low of 55.9, added up to 1.7 degrees F above normal. We had one significant cool spell in the 2nd week of the month, with nights as cool as 43. There was no prolonged heatwave, just a few…

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This is going to be real quick, but after a decent thunderstorm near The Dalles on Saturday and a big storm with outflow winds, for the Portland Metro on Sunday – today we’re going to have another good shot at widespread thunder action. We have a hot atmosphere, and moist southerly flow in the upper-middle layers.  That, combined with intense surface heating from the June sun, should trigger storms along the Cascades.  Furthermore, an incoming marine ‘front’ in the Willamette…

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What a fun weather day for June! In the Portland Metro area there were heavy thunderstorms with dime-sized hail in places, and even reports of a minor tornado in East Vancouver. Here in The Dalles though, the big change has been a sharp chill in the air. Today’s high was only 68 degrees, a full 10 degrees below normal for this time of year. By 8pm the temperature had dropped to 55; we were about as cool as the normal…

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  It sure has been warm and dry this May…but if you haven’t been keeping close track of the numbers, you may be shocked to find out just how warm it truly is. At least in The Dalles, it’s been MUCH warmer than the warmest May on record. That was in 1958, when it was 65.7 degrees F. That number is 4.9 degrees above the modern 30-day averages, but 5.6 degrees above the 1951-1980 May average. Spring is gradually getting…

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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,…

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I think it’s pretty obvious now, with daytime temps consistently rising into the 50s over the past several days, that we’re done with any kind of wintry weather for the season. So it’s time to pull the fork and say that WINTER IS OVER in the low to middle elevations of the Pacific Northwest, including the Columbia River Gorge. This means that not only is arctic air completely out of the picture…but we also probably won’t see any more wet…

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