WeatherWatcher: Out of season wind storm strikes, forecast

Looking east on N 200th St across Dayton Ave N.
The scene that could be found almost around every corner on Saturday
Photo by Carl Dinse

• Forecast
• Wind
• August Graphs

Forecast: We are going to be in a cool weather pattern through the next week. High pressure has moved west far off the west coast allowing for a trough to set up sinking all the way down from Alaska along the west coast. This pattern will bring us showers and rain at times with temperatures running around the mid 60's - 70°F for a high, with lows dipping into the mid and lower 50's. Late week may see some clearing and gradual warming to the mid 70's.

Wind: We had a very out of season wind storm strike the region inside and out on Saturday. We had the strongest winds we've seen since at least last fall, gusting up to 56 miles per hour at Shorecrest High school. Many other local stations that normally record good wind data were offline due to the widespread power outages. This storm, due to its early arrival, caught all the trees off guard as none of the fall foliage has dropped yet, and with dry conditions many trees were brittle (less flexible) and thus damage was widespread. Power outages haven't been this widespread since the December 14, 2006 storm.

This storm was a deepening low pressure system that formed off the Northern California coast and quickly got stronger and moved north to northeast across Vancouver Island and the north tip of the Olympic peninsula. This created a strong pressure gradient through the Puget Sound bringing us our strong winds on Saturday.

This storm is more normal for October and November, rare in September and unheard of for late August. This storm signals a significant change in our weather pattern. The blob has moved west and is dissipating, the ridging has also moved west as a result, opening the flood gates for these type of fall storms. Though nothing immediate is on the horizon, I think this is only the first in many fall and winter storms we may see. Mother nature says "Here, have some fire wood, you're going to need it." At least we had warm temperatures outside during this event. The silver lining in all of this, I think we are all done with 90°F + high temperatures this summer.

Some graphs for the month of August (click on the graph to see the original size):

August 2015

August 2015

August 2015

For current conditions and storm updates see Shoreline Weather.