Lohmann: Expect A Dry September, Good Possibility of La Niña

While the season technically runs through September 23^rd, many consider this weekend the end of summer. As we look back on the summer of 2021, meteorologist Marilynn Lohmann with the National Weather Service said the year will go into the record books for a variety of reasons, whether it was the record heat experienced in June, the extreme drought or a little of both.

The temperatures over the past couple of days have cooled, but will we see an end to these dry conditions as we welcome in September? Lohmann said unfortunately, the Inland Northwest will remain dry for the foreseeable future.

“The fast moving systems are bringing some showers to western Washington, but little moisture is expected to reach east of the Cascades with the extended models showing no substantial moisture through the mid part of the month.”

While it looks like much of the same in the coming weeks, what can we expect with fall and even winter around the corner. Lohmann said because of cooling water off of the coast of South America, there is currently about a 70% chance of La Niña during the winter months of November through January.

“In a number of previous La Niña, the northwest has gotten above normal precipitation and temperatures are normally cooler than normal, with the effects seen most often in the late winter, January and February.  So while the one component La Niña looks to be favorable for a wettest and cooler winter we will need to continue to watch development of other systems that might interfere with it, such as in 2015, when we had the So called Blob, or warm water off the coast of Washington, that caused much of the winter precipitation to fall as rain vs snow.”