112 Years Ago

Just a quick post to let you know (and to make sure I don't forget) that we broke a 112 year old high temperature record for any Aug 19 in Hood River. Yesterday's official high of 101° broke the old record of 99°, set in... get this... 1897.

(I vaguely remember that year, and if memory serves, I didn't have A/C at the time. It sucked.)

The past 3 days were a more typical heat wave around here; characterized by a heat low that moves day by day from PDX, to HR, and then to TD and points east. A taste of extreme heat; breaking just in time as the west wind returns and brings relief.

Summer Rain

It's not unusual for summer in the Hood to be dry. July thru August, and sometimes all the way into mid-October, we can go for long stretches without a drop of rain.

But June, an often wet month, well known for swelling local cherries to bursting with sudden downpours, turned off the rain on June 6th.

And it left the tap off until August 11... when 0.03" of delicious, glorious warm rain fell on our heat-wave parched landscape, relieving a 66 day long dry spell. Sweet...

Even sweeter, a record amount of rain was recorded the next day, August 12. Odd that a mere 0.04 inches of rain would break a record (0.03") that dated all the way back to 1922, but hey, if you're gonna try to break a rain record, this is the time of the year to do it.

July 2009 Revisited

Compared to historical averages, July in Hood River was way warmer, totally dry, and less windy.

The temperature was a sizzling 6.7 degrees warmer than long term averages, and 2.4 degrees warmer than more recent averages (2000-2008). This was the warmest July at my weather station since I started keeping reliable records in 2000. There was no measurable precipitation, compared to a July normal precip of 0.23". The wind speed was considerably lower than average.

Following a warm, dry June, July continued the trend. The first 4 days were above 90, with a 98 degree high on the 2nd. Another brief hot spell in the middle of the month, followed by a quick dip to low 70's highs, and then... and then....The Mother Of All Heat Waves arrived. I pretty much described it in the previous blog post, but let me just restate: It was too hot. It was too humid. It was too long.

Oddly enough though, there were only 2 official local temperature records set in July. See the previous blog post for details. It certainly seemed like there were more records than that during the extended heat wave, but maybe that was just my brain frying...

The data below is from my home weather station. To view its monthly summary and graphs at Weather Underground, click here.

The "historical average" numbers for temperature and rainfall are from the Hood River MCAREC data. Historical wind average is from my station's 2000 to 2008 data. Note that average wind speeds include all 24 hours of the day and night, which is why they are way lower than daytime peak winds. In addition, the wind speed at this station is considerably lower than on the Columbia River.

	High	Low	Average	Historical Average
Temperature (F)	107	48	73.8	67.1
Wind (mph)	34		4.1	5.2
Rainfall (in)	0.00		0.00 (total)	0.23