SEATTLE- When weather record keeping began in the Emerald City, it was 1894. That year: Grover Cleveland was president, Coca-cola was first sold in bottles, the iconic Tower Bridge in London opened for traffic and our state was still just a U.S. territory. In those 122 years since, we've never seen three consecutive April days in a row above 80. That is, until this week. Sunday (80), Monday (89) and Tuesday (84) all broke individual one-day records, but collectively they set a new standard for April heat.
What Seattle looked like when weather records began. Courtesy: Wikipedia commons
Yesterday we continued to break records all over the Northwest: Medford (91), Portland Downtown (90), Portland Int'l Airport (89), The Dalles (89), Vancouver (87 tie), Troutdale (87), Olympia (86), Salem (85), McMinnville (83), Wenatchee (82), Ephrata (82), Walla Walla (80), Forks/Quillayute (76) and Bellingham (74).
Today we'll be close to 80 around much of Puget Sound. Increasing clouds from a system moving into Northern California should keep most of us just shy of a 4th day in the 80s around Puget Sound, but more records will likely fall. The
number to beat in the Seattle record books for April 20th is 74, so we'll likely beat that by 4 or 5 degrees. If it stays muggy this afternoon we have a chance of showers and possible thunderstorms in SW Washington, likely staying south of Tacoma.
Tomorrow nature's air conditioning pushes the coastal clouds inland and we're going to see our high temps drop by 20 degrees. That will feel chilly, but it's an April reality check. Normal for today is actually 59 degrees.