July 21st: Tropical Storm Moisture brings Lightning/Fire Outbreak?!?

[00:00:00]Hey, everybody. Michael Snyder, Pacific Northwest Weather Watch. Today is July 21st, and right now we're looking at the mid-level water vapor loop. You can see we got the Pacific Northwest to the upper right. We got a lot of moisture coming from this tropical system up and across the region. We have thunderstorm potential across the entire Pacific Northwest again. Yes, we may be doing another lightning outbreak here across the region. We're going to dive into all those details here as we go through the video this morning. We're going to take a look at this heat that we'll be dealing with over the next couple of days as well. So, just a thank you to everybody who's been supporting this channel. As you guys might know, it takes some time every single day for me to create these videos, and it's much appreciated. Everybody's been supporting this channel. A lot of you from the start. And if you're also so inclined, a lot of times a Patreon is the better way to actually donate some of your hard-earned money. They let creators keep a little bit more, but either way, I'm very appreciative of everybody who's supported this channel from the start.

[00:00:57]This channel is not possible without you. So, taking a look here across the Pacific Northwest, you get this ridge nosing in here. That's what's warming our temperatures up. There's the remnants now of Tropical Storm Alita bringing deep moisture back and across the area. It goes through its extratropical transition, and then it's just an upper-level low off our coastline bringing some deep moisture and thunderstorm potential will arrive as we go on in through even the day today, Wednesday, and especially on Thursday across much of the area. And then we're going to kick this trough through as we go through this weekend, and that's going to bring a whole host of new issues to the area. It's a lot of lightning, and then we bring a trough through that's really going to kick up the winds. Man, we are going to be dealing with some potentially really nasty fire danger here, and just, you know, high-level fire conditions, strong winds, ongoing fires. And yeah, we'll all start to dive into this more here in a moment. But taking a look here at 500 millibars, 18,000 ft. Again, you You the last little bit of the warm core associated with the light out here.

[00:01:58]And that's one of the defining characteristics of these tropical systems. You can also see the cooler air aloft across the Gulf of Alaska. So, if I put that into motion, you can kind of see it loses its tropical characteristics and it just brings its deep moisture and becomes this upper-level low and associated with that trough off our coastline and then that's going to start to kick through. You'll also notice this next tropical system and it's a bit of a warm core there as it marches off to the west towards the Hawaiian Islands, maybe um if that does ever come close to the Hawaiian Islands as a impactful tropical system, I will put out videos on that as well. But, if we scroll towards the weekend, you can really see that colder air aloft start to ride through here and that's what's going to kick up that pressure gradient and bring the strong winds across the region that could is going to really fan the flames of any fire that is ongoing here across the area. And again, you just got to marvel at just how unusual this is for this tropical system to be bringing this deep slug of moisture back up across the Pacific Northwest. Look, by the time we're going through Wednesday here, a lot of these areas are approaching 100% of the normal amount of water in the atmosphere and you can see the monsoon moisture across a lot of the Intermountain West. The next tropical system off to our south and again, likely another thunderstorm outbreak coming even to western zones as we go on into Wednesday and the day on Thursday.

[00:03:10]So, one more look at that here of precipitable water again, just kind of marveling at that upper level off the coast really bringing that deep moisture back up into the Pacific Northwest as we go through Wednesday and on into the day on Thursday. So, now let's talk about the fire danger. Isolated dry thunderstorm potential today. That's kind of a nightmare because these storms are not producing enough precipitation to help extinguish these fires and so they're likely just going to be starting more. So, there is day one. This goes all the way through Wednesday morning.

[00:03:38]Day two it starts to include portions of western Washington up into the Cascades of Washington there as well. Then we go through day three, they have it still out there isolated dry thunderstorm potential for one, two, three days. And then on day four, yep, it's still there.

[00:03:53]Washington Cascades, that would include British Columbia, Northeast Washington, Idaho Panhandle, Northeast Oregon, kind of clipping Montana there also. And then they start to include the elevated fire risk there on day four. Look at day five. They see that trough coming. They know what's coming down the line. When you have these fires out there and you start to kick up the winds, man, this is not going to be good here, folks. And then we go through day six. I don't know that I've ever seen a day six probability out there. Again, dry conditions, low relative humidities, and windy out there. So, man, this is not going to be good here. Now, if we take a look here, keep clicking this to see if they're going to update here. It usually updates late morning, but it still applies here. Well, we have lightning fire started in with some critical high fire danger out there as well all the way through the day on Friday. You can see your individual zones and what we're expecting there also. Now, something I've noticed here with the high-resolution rapid refresh, when it tries to show surface smoke, I've been smelling smoke out there, and it only shows a little bit here. So, sometimes I That's what I've noticed over the last few years. It doesn't always do that well. And as we scroll through the day today, I mean, this is starting to get a bit thick here. This is near the ground for the Willamette Valley into some of Western Washington here and up into Northwest Washington also. A lot of smoke out there across the Cascades and Eastern portions here. So, you can kind of see that moving around as we go through the next couple of days. And again, the winds are kind of weak. So, if some of that filters down into the lower elevations here, you know, you can't completely rule rule that out. I mean, I didn't open my windows because it was kind of stinky out there. I could smell it, and I'm pretty close to SeaTac there. So, let me know what you're seeing in your location. Now, let's take a look at this lightning threat incoming. We're going to scroll through the day today. It starts to include the Oregon Cascades today. And then as we go through the day Wednesday, the upper-level low's going to be crawling off our coastline. It could be kicking off some thunderstorms over the open waters. But as we go through the day Wednesday, the big story is this lightning moving up the Oregon Cascades into the Washington Cascades and perhaps including some of the coastal ranges here as well, western Oregon and maybe even moving up into western Washington a bit. But yeah, look at this activity.

[00:05:55]This goes on for several hours there right across northwest Oregon towards Portland and eventually starts to move up into the Puget Sound here as you go through Wednesday night into early Thursday morning. I mean, multiple rounds potentially with this upper level low off our coast and this very deep moisture across the region. So yeah, we may be doing this all over again. Almost a week to the date with our versus our last lightning outbreak there also. And then also through the day on Friday, we may be kicking off some stuff. It looks like that'll be moving off to the east though but for the most part in the day Friday.

[00:06:27]Thursday Wednesday night and Thursday are probably the biggest concern as of right now. Now, if we look at the high resolution rapid refresh again, we'll scroll through here and we'll go through the day today, some thunderstorms and then on the day Wednesday into Wednesday night as you can see some of this activity really moving up and across the area. And a lot of times these high resolution models will underdo the amount of convection ongoing that. So keep that in the back of your mind. I mentioned that mentioned that before the last lightning outbreak and it did come to fruition and that may be the case yet again cuz you might look at this and be like, "Ah, this looks like moderate rain showers. What's the big deal?"

[00:07:00]Those those are likely to be producing lightning at this time as it comes up across the region if the high resolution model is right. And it ends right there on Thursday morning. That's still another round or two yet to go. So when thunder roars, Timothy goes indoors. If you haven't seen that, check it out. The short spine raccoon there up in Ballard.

[00:07:17]Yeah, pretty funny stuff there on social media. Now, looking at the issue coming up here again, all the lightning activity because this upper level low across the region here as we go through Wednesday and Thursday. And then as we head off towards this weekend, you can kind of see the wind start to pick up a bit there as we go through Thursday. And given some stronger westerlies. And then watch what happens as we go through Friday night. Still again, some of the offshore winds but we really start to ramp them up here as we go through Saturday afternoon. I mean, yeah, that deep trough, some really strong winds. This could be really bad news here, folks. I mean, that could be some really nasty, you know, fire spread with the the very strong winds. And again, the east slopes of the Cascades of relative humidities are going to be very low. It's likely to bring some precipitation with these systems, but not much of that is going to get east of the mountains as well. In fact, let's look at that because that's something I really didn't check too much on last night's run. We'll scroll through here and the next 6 days. As we go out, you can see the thunderstorm activity kind of embedded out there and, you know, it's not amounting to much there really across the places we need it. That's going to be more of just a lightning concern. But if we go through this week and you can see some places like western BC are getting precipitation, but that's not where we need it. We don't need it on the Olympic mountains too much right now. And it's really not even that much for the Cascades of Washington. But once you get to the east of the crest, I mean, that's really there's hardly anything. And so, this these systems are not going to be producing precipitation to help us with these fires. So, also make a note of that. Uh now, looking at the heat advisory, you got a lot of those out there as well. And you can see some red flag warnings are up and that's, no doubt, going to be an ongoing theme here as we go on into this upcoming weekend. Air quality alerts, fire danger, and all kinds of crazy stuff there. So, we'll check back on all this tomorrow as well.

[00:09:05]Now, the temperatures here. Look at the national bottom models calling for 93 in Seattle. Just major heat and perhaps up towards 100 for Portland. But we have the mid-level clouds and some smoke out there as well that will be trying to trim a few degrees off these high temperatures. You can see the Tri-Cities otherwise would probably be up towards 100°. And you can see some some of the interior valleys right along the Canada-Washington border there, Okanagan River Valley 101, maybe some 90s up into the interior portions of Vancouver Island, look at southwest Oregon interior valleys maybe up towards 100° there also Boise 100 degrees. And then look at tomorrow. It wants to show 95 for Seattle, 100 degrees for Olympia, 100 for for Portland, and some of the Willamette Valley in the upper 90s. So, kind of crazy stuff there.

[00:09:50]And again, the smoke and the high clouds are going to try to hold that down. Some of the mid-level clouds coming through.

[00:09:55]And on the day Wednesday, we may even have some convection. So, this is going to be a really tricky forecast. You could be 89 degrees in Portland if you got convection ongoing, or you could you know, if it comes in lighter than what has been showing, you could definitely be much warmer. So, if we take a look at that, uh I wanted to kind of show uh these the clouds moving across the region. You can kind of see the smoke out there as well. So, you can imagine why the high for high temperature forecast is going to be such a tricky one. Now, let's go to Thursday. You can see there is a cool down coming. And again, if there's thunderstorms ongoing, you're probably not getting the 84 in Seattle, or you know, mid-upper 80s for Portland as well. Another warm day east of the mountains, however, then we go through this upcoming weekend, and we do cool things off. But again, the price to be paid for that is the strong onshore winds, really fanning the flames of any new fires and any fires that are already currently ongoing there across the region. So, again, I showed you that one. There's the 6-10 day updated yesterday, not yet updated today, but you can see they are picking up on that trough as we go on and through the later portion of July. And uh yeah, I don't know about this. They just kind of threw this broad brush that shouldn't be applied as of right now. Maybe above normal for Cascade Crest westbound briefly over a couple days, but otherwise, yeah, that's not going to help out the fires east of the mountains as of right now.

[00:11:14]Now, looking at the extended forecast, it goes all the way into early September now, and you can see the continued below normal signal on the European. The monsoon season signal is strong off to our south and east, but that does not help us across a lot of Pacific Northwest. And the above normal temperatures across much of the region, save for maybe the Oregon coast as we get through the early portion of September.

[00:11:35]But yeah, check me out on Patreon and Facebook. Click like and subscribe if you would and I will catch you guys in tomorrow's forecast.