Weather Watcher: Cool weather, then back to seasonal temperatures, smoke to linger

Photo by Ed Cruver

You may have noticed temperatures on Saturday were much colder than we are used to. My Shoreline station topped out at 61.5°F for the day. We have a cool northwest flow influencing the weather through Monday. The northwest and north winds are bringing the smoke from the major wildfires in Vancouver Island and the interior of British Columbia down into our region through Tuesday.

Tuesday the weather is expected to warm up to 75°F or near 80°F. I'm leaning towards 75°F because of the layer of smoke we are expected to have in the area will block out some of the heat from the sun. Wednesday through next weekend temperatures will be seasonal with highs in the mid 70's and lows in the 50's.

During mornings with low clouds when the marine onshore flow is stronger we can expect to see spotty drizzle or sprinkles in the area, just enough to get the ground wet. No significant amounts of precipitation are expected.

Here's the daily high and low temperatures for August so far. You can see the nose dive in temperatures on Saturday.

We can expect to see areas of smoke or haze for the next week or two at the least -- probably until major rain events return in late September or October. Until then a good place to check the outdoor air quality is the State of Washington Department of Ecology Air Quality website. This page has a map of the air quality monitoring stations. We happen to have an air quality station at the Lake Forest Park town center. These stations update once every 4 hours or so but you can see what time the last update was by hovering your mouse over the dot on the map.

For current weather conditions visit www.shorelineweather.com