11pm Tuesday…
The chilly and very dry air mass gave tons of weather stations east of the Cascades record lows on Tuesday morning. Here’s a list from the Pendleton NWS:
STATION PREVIOUS NEW RECORDS RECORD/YEAR RECORD BEGAN *JOHN DAY(CITY), OR 20 / 1960 19 1891 *LA GRANDE(CITY), OR 25 / 1992 25 (TIED) 1887 *LONG CREEK, OR 18 / 2008 18 (TIED) 1908 MEACHAM, OR 21 / 2011 20 1929 *MONUMENT 2, OR 24 / 1992 19 1915 *MORO, OR 26 / 2011 25 1897 PENDLETON(AIRPORT), OR 30 / 2011 26 1934 *PENDLETON(CITY), OR 29 / 2011 26 1889 *SISTERS, OR 17 / 2002 17 (TIED) 1958 REDMOND, OR 20 / 1961 18 1941 THE DALLES, OR 30 / 1972 28 1929 *GOLDENDALE, WA 24 / 1920 22 1905 Burns was 13 degrees and Baker City was 12, both records for the date. As you see below, Baker City hasn't seen a 12 degree temp in the 2nd half of April since the airport records began in the early 1940s!
Coming up…for those of you who think the 7 Day forecast never actually improves with time but most likely goes downhill? Not this time; it appears Thursday and Friday we’ll see temps stay in the mid 70s. The 00z WRF-GFS even tries to get us close to 80 on Friday…we’ll see.
So we may end up with 5 days of straight sunshine for this workweek!
Here’s the new 00z GFS ensemble chart:
You can still see the chilly showers for the weekend, but HUGE variety of solutions by the time we get to Tuesday. Anywhere from -4 to +17 at 850mb! There seems to be a “cold cluster” like the chilly/showery ECMWF, and a cluster showing upper level heights rising dramatically…Roll the dice…
Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen