Soak up the sun mid-week before heavy rain returns to Thurston County
Sunny days and dry weather have been in the dreams of many Washingtonians as of late, as the Pacific Northwest continues to see unseasonably wet and cool weeks.
But some sun is in the forecast this week, though not for long.
According to the National Weather Service, Tuesday and Wednesday will be partly sunny after small chances of rain in the mornings. Tuesday’s high is forecast to be 74 degrees and Wednesday is 69 degrees.
Mike McFarland, meteorologist with NWS in Seattle, said the region is continuing to see troughs of low pressure accompanied by atmospheric rivers that are bringing unseasonably cool temperatures and heavy rain. These powerful systems are making it hard for ridges, or systems of high pressure, to stay for very long to dry and warm things up.
The rain will begin Thursday and increase Friday, with highs in the 60s. Rain remains in the forecast until Monday. The NWS is reporting that this weekend’s rainfall will be relatively heavy and much like a November rainstorm.
Olympia has gotten .93 inches of rain since the start of June. The normal amount of rain for the entire month of June is 1.46 inches, so it’s likely the area will go above the norm.
Last weekend alone Olympia got .52 inches of rain on Saturday and .34 inches on Sunday. The normal for those dates is .06 of an inch.
McFarland said things are starting to heat up further south, but the weather this year is nothing like what the region saw in 2021, when all-time high temperature records were set as temperatures soared above 100 degrees in late June.
McFarland said if it hadn’t been so hot and extreme last year, maybe the cold and rain this time around wouldn’t seem quite as dramatic.
“I remember a really wet June from when I was a kid,” McFarland said. “It’s certainly a contrast to last year’s warm, dry spring.”
This story was originally published June 6, 2022 at 11:28 AM.
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