Record February “Heat” Today

7pm Friday…

If you live in the Portland/Vancouver metro area, you’ve just experienced the warmest February day in 27 years!

We expected today to be “warm” across the metro area, but temperatures soared well past our 62-degree high-temperature forecast. PDX Airport officially hit 67 degrees, breaking the daily record high. Notice the entire metro area was extremely warm for the month of February

Warm February 11th(KPTV)

Aurora’s 69 is the warmest official temperature I’ve seen in NW Oregon or SW Washington today. This next graphic shows the top 15 warmest days on record at PDX. By the way, PDX records go back to late 1940…about 80 years. You can see the last time we were this warm (in February) was in 1995.

Warm February 11th(KPTV)

Now look at those dates a bit more closely…notice anything? The warmest 16 days in February have all been in the 2nd half of the month. That means this is the earliest we’ve been this warm. Now check out the regional high temperatures today

Warm February 11th(KPTV)

Several things stick out…a warm coastline for sure. Actually I thought we’d see more easterly wind surface earlier on the coastline for more mid-upper 60s. Only Tillamook was “crazy warm”. Although that may happen in more spots out there tomorrow, it’ll be a fantastic Saturday on the beaches.

See those valley temperatures? Eugene barely broke out of the low-level inversion and Roseburg stayed in clouds/fog all day. So here in the north Willamette Valley we had the perfect setup with the easterly wind coming down into the lowlands. I expect a similar setup tomorrow except warmer temperatures down around Eugene/Roseburg and a few notches cooler in the metro area.

Some other records today, all in the metro area except Salem.

Warm February 11th(KPTV)

It is interesting that the atmosphere overhead was NOT in record territory today. Here’s a plot showing 850mb temperatures (around 5,000′) over Salem the last few decades. This is from the twice-daily balloon launches. The black line is average for any one day during the year. Makes sense because an average temperature up around 5,000′ this time of year is right around 32 degrees (0 degC on this graph). The red squiggles above each represent the highest (warmest) value observed on any one day. Today is the red dot I’ve highlighted in yellow. A good 5 degrees below record values this time of year…just over +10 degC.

Warm February 11th(KPTV)

That’s it for now…enjoy your weekend!