WeatherWatcher: Chance of thunderstorms Saturday evening

 

From the archives: Lightning over Lake Washington from Log Boom Park
Photo by Carl Dinse, July 11, 2009

Every few summers we seem to get that one day, or night, or a week worth of active weather containing lightning in the area. 

The last major outbreak of lightning storms was September 7, 2019. This is typical weather for summers here in the Shoreline and Lake Forest Park areas. 

Sometimes we get it two or three years in a row and other times we go up to five years or so without one. Sometimes it is one evening and done, other times we get it spread out with breaks over the course of a week.

Starting Saturday afternoon or early evening, we will start a week of excitement in weather. Our biggest chance will be between 6pm and 11pm Saturday evening. Some showers and thunderstorms might still pop up overnight into Sunday morning. 

We also may see some windy conditions in isolated spots Saturday evening, with some isolated wind gusts that could reach up to 45mph, but it won't be a typical windstorm.

The winds will be short bursts, and isolated to thunderstorm activity areas. 

What can make them particularly damaging, though, is they can switch directions at any time and all our trees are in full summer foliage right now. I can't rule out scattered power outages with this event.

Once we get past the main event sometime Sunday morning, skies should start to clear. We'll be back to our normal sunny weather until Tuesday afternoon. 

Chances of showers return Tuesday afternoon and possibly a slight chance of thundershowers return Tuesday through Thursday. The threat of lightning in these showers should ease off completely by the end of next week.

For current weather conditions please visit www.shorelineweather.com