Weather With Cliff Mass

Drummer Ian McKain-Pitts and saxophonist Aidan Moore from Bellarmine Preparatory School in Tacoma will virtually join Abe Beeson on Evening Jazz tonight at 8 p.m. (Oct. 1) as guest DJs. Listen to the show and read their Q&A.

The first week of August is generally the hottest time of the year in Washington. This year, people in the Puget Sound region already have experienced some record temperatures, with highs topping 90 degrees for the first time in 2020 on Monday. Olympia reached an eye-popping 98 degrees. Seattle made it to 94. But a cooling trend that will continue through Monday has started, says KNKX weather expert Cliff Mass.

This story originally aired Aug. 23, 2019. Most people have had that classic summer experience of driving along a warm road and seeing a shimmering patch ahead that looks like water. But when you get there, it’s gone. This is a trick of the atmosphere, caused by different densities of the air, associated with temperature.

It’s that most wonderful time of the year in the Pacific Northwest, when we get to enjoy clear skies, warm yet comfortable temperatures and 9 p.m. sunsets. Summers here are the payoff for our long, dark winters. And this week, the "perfect weather" many of us like to gloat about has finally arrived. This summer, these conditions are coinciding with the appearance of a rare comet called NEOWISE. KNKX weather expert Cliff Mass is among the astronomy enthusiasts who ventured out at 3 a.m. to see it.

People in the Pacific Northwest sometimes jokingly call the sixth month here "Juneuary," because of the persistently gloomy weather we often face in June. Now an abundance of offshore flow — marine air coming in off the cool Pacific Ocean — has KNKX weather expert Cliff Mass calling July "Julember."

July 4 is upon us. Normally, that means our air quality takes a big hit. It's an issue that KNKX weather expert Cliff Mass often talks about. Mass has studied the impact of fireworks on our air quality. This year, things will be a little different. With all the major community fireworks displays canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The curse of the wet weekend is making another appearance as June comes to an end. The month sometimes referred to as "Juneuary" in the Pacific Northwest has actually included quite a few lovely summer days this year, with temperatures hitting the 80s under bluebird skies. (Just not many on weekends.) But our somewhat soggy spring this year in Washington has nothing on what folks north of us in British Columbia have been experiencing.

If you feel like you’re being punished by the weather for staying indoors during the workweek, you’re not alone. Lots of people in Western Washington have noticed a pattern of fair and sunny weather that abruptly turns to rain as soon as the weekend arrives.

We’re in for another cool, wet weekend. Rain and rain showers dominate the forecast through Monday night. High temperatures won’t get past the mid-60s. This is the kind of forecast most of us have come to rely on as we plan our activities, using radar viewers and other online tools to know what’s coming our way, sometimes down to the hour.

Gray skies, rain showers and possible thunderstorms are in the forecast again. It’s a pretty typical for this time of year in the Pacific Northwest, where most people rattle off phrases such as "June Gloom" and "June-uary" to describe this kind of weather. The exception here is thunder and lightning. Intense storms that are common in other parts of the country are rare here.

After a string of warm and sunny days, residents of Western Washington were bracing for the effects of an upper level disturbance coming up from California. The weekend forecast calls for significant rain and possible thunderstorms, with temperatures dropping into the mid-60s.

“An improving trend” is in store this Memorial Day weekend. The clouds, rain and cool temperatures we’ve been experiencing over the past several days will yield to something a little less cloudy. You can expect dry conditions in most places and it will warm up considerably, to as high as 70 degrees on Monday, says KNKX Weather expert Cliff Mass. But it will still be pretty cloudy.

After a heat wave that left many of us dreaming of summer, more typical spring weather is back in the greater Puget Sound region. That means a chance of rain pretty much every day and temperatures in the 60s, along with clouds and sun breaks. It also means the summer outlook for water supplies, stream flows and wildfires are looking normal to favorable, despite a scary dry spell in April.

Temperatures around the Puget Sound region were shooting up Friday into the mid-to-upper 70s, after an already warm week. And the forecast for Mother’s Day weekend promises temperatures in the low 80s. It almost feels like summer. But KNKX weather expert Cliff Mass says this kind of heat wave in mid- to late May is not that unusual for the region.

As May begins, the weather continues to offer that typical grab bag of conditions that is typical for spring in the Northwest: plenty of clouds, along with showers, sunbreaks, even possible thunderstorms. And often, forecasts predict the probability of these phenomena: a 10 percent chance of rain, say — or 50 percent chance. That sounds plausible, but it turns out most people don’t know what that actually means.

After a pretty long dry spell, April showers have returned to the Puget Sound region. We’ve entered a typical phase of showers and sun breaks, with lots of instability in the atmosphere that produces dramatic clouds with light blazing through them.

Maybe you felt a spark as you walked over carpeting and touched a doorknob. Or perhaps you noted how arid the soil was when you went out to do some gardening. These are signs of low relative humidity in the air. And Western Washington has experienced extreme levels of it — on several days this past month. KNKX weather expert Cliff Mass says it’s been so dry, he coined a new term for it: "dry storm."

If you’ve been feeling chilly lately, you are not alone. Lots of people may have noticed on walks around their neighborhoods that spring this year has been colder than usual. And in fact, now that March is over, statistics show the month has been colder on average than January.

Sprinkles and showers are in the forecast for most of Western Washington this weekend, with temperatures hovering around 50 degrees. It’s perfect weather for gardening or maybe taking a long run or walk in your neighborhood. The skies above likely will be quieter, too. The spread of the new coronavirus already has slowed air traffic aloft. An even more dramatic decline in commercial flight schedules is coming soon. And that could affect weather forecasting.

The official start of spring comes a little early this year, in tandem with the vernal equinox that showed up in most U.S. calendars on March 19. Although meteorological spring began in the Pacific Northwest about a month ago with signs of warmer weather, KNKX weather expert Cliff Mass says around now is when certain typical features of spring become evident.