Sun stays as summer goes

Autumn arrives at 2:18 this afternoon, but you likely wouldn't know it by looking outside. High temperatures are forecast to be in the mid-80s today and Wednesday as summer weather lingers.

“One last gasp of summer, it looks like,” said Johnny Burg, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Seattle.

The eight-day span between July 26 and Aug. 2 with high temperatures of at least 90 degrees is likely seared into many residents’ memories. That period was capped by two days above the century mark: 101 on July 28 and 104 on July 29, tying the record for that date based on measurements taken at the Olympia Regional Airport. The brutal heat prompted public agencies to open their doors for residents who lacked air conditioning or ways to cool off.

The summer of 2009, however, didn’t make the list of the hottest, driest summers on record.

“It was definitely warmer and drier than normal, but it didn’t come close to those,” Burg said.

The average high temperature was 62.6 degrees, well off the record average of 65.6 degrees set in 1958, Burg said. About 4 inches of rain fell, a deluge compared with the driest summer on record – 0.97 inches of rain in 2006.

The weather service began tracking seasonal averages for temperature and precipitation at the Olympia airport in 1948.

Burg said the outlook for fall and winter is warmer and drier than normal thanks to El Niño, an abnormal warming of surface ocean temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean that causes shifts in weather patterns worldwide.

For the past three years, the most memorable weather has come in December: the Hanukkah Eve windstorm of 2006 (Dec. 14-15), record flooding in Lewis and south Thurston counties in 2007 (starting Dec. 3), and heavy snowfall that paralyzed the area just before Christmas last year.

Burg said El Niño should lessen the frequency and severity of these kinds of weather events.

Christian Hill: 360-754-5427

chill@theolympian.com