The end of summer? Warm weather kicks off Labor Day weekend in Olympia, but cold is coming
Many think of Labor Day weekend as the final chance to squeeze in the last couple of days of summer before temperatures start to drop for the fall.
That’s especially true for Olympia residents, who have the Harbor Days maritime festival to look forward to from Friday to Sunday. But this Labor Day weekend may not be sun-filled perfection for outdoor activities.
“The weekend is going to be kind of a tale of two halves; we’re going to have a pretty nice start to it, fairly warm,” National Weather Service meteorologist Dustin Guy told The Olympian. “Olympia should warm up into the lower 80s by Saturday afternoon. But then, as we get into the second half of the weekend, we’re going to go back downhill pretty quickly.”
A weekend of two halves
Olympia residents woke up Thursday morning to overcast skies, scattered showers and below-average temperatures. Thursday’s high was forecast to be just 67 degrees — about 9 degrees below normal — and about one-tenth of an inch of rain was expected to fall in the area.
The rain is coming from a low-level trough that’s moving through the region, Guy of NWS said, but it’s expected to move out and into Oregon by the end of the day.
Olympia will then get a reprieve on Friday and Saturday, with temperatures reaching as high as 86 degrees on Saturday. But a second system will move into the area by Sunday, bringing cooler temperatures and more rain on Sunday and Monday.
Between Sunday evening and Monday morning, Olympia can expect about another one-tenth inch of rain.
“If you want to spend time outside in sunny and warm weather, Saturday’s the day, and then it just kind of goes downhill after that,” Guy said.
The end of summer
Saturday’s sunny and warm temperatures don’t just signal Labor Day weekend’s only nice weather but potentially the final hot day of the year.
A series of low-pressure systems are poised to move through the Pacific Northwest in the coming weeks, resulting in wet and cooler weather for the foreseeable future.
Once the sun disappears after Saturday, the highest temperature the Weather Service is forecasting within the next week is 72 degrees. The average high for early September in Olympia is 75 degrees, and it quickly dips to 66 degrees by the end of the month. Combined with the low-pressure systems moving into the area, it’s likely that Saturday will be Olympia’s last 80-plus-degree day of the year.
“I can’t definitively say summer’s completely over,” Guy said. “But just looking ahead as we go into next week, I don’t really see a trend towards particularly warm, dry conditions.”
The Climate Prediction Center, an extension of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, forecasts a 33-40% chance of below-average temperatures and a 33-40% chance of above-average precipitation for Olympia in the next two weeks.
This story was originally published August 31, 2023 at 11:53 AM.
