Smoke Could Linger Until Tuesday
Not much good news when it comes to our weather today. Smoke will likely remain in the air around Douglas County until Tuesday. High temps for the next three days, 99, 98, 97. It's not until next week that we will get relief, and it might only be for a few days. Chance of lightning again today. Lightning likely started the Patton Meadow Fire down west of Lakeview near Klamath Falls yesterday. That fire is already already 2k acres. Here is the the forecast from the NWS in Medford on Friday August 13. Excessively hot temperatures will continue through the weekend as an abnormally strong area of high pressure maintains it`s grip over sections of Oregon. Temperatures will push into the triple digits within many of the valleys west of the Cascades later today. We did lower the model high temperature forecast by 3 degrees because of smoke covering most of the Pacific Northwest. Even with these abnormally warm temperatures, no high temperature records will fall within our climate records. However, we are forecasting a record max min of 72 in Medford this morning and 71 on Saturday morning. With hot day time temperatures and warm overnight lows, we`ll keep the excessive heat warning going through Saturday evening. Temperatures will gradually lower into the start of next week. As for the smoke forecast, there will be no relief from smoke particulates floating around the atmosphere. Multiple fires are burning with high intensity and very low containments this morning. In addition, we`re not factoring in any new starts popping up over the next 24 hours. We indeed have a new large fire named the Patton Meadow Fire just west of Lakeview this morning. If one is looking for hope, models are forecasting a trough and cold front to swing through Tuesday morning. These two features should help clear out the smoke for the majority areas for a short period of time, especially those to the north and west. Finally, scattered thunderstorms are expected within southern Oregon and northern California Friday afternoon. It seems thunderstorms did preferentially form in thinner smoke yesterday. It`s unclear if that will happen today as many of the convective allowing models are showing thunderstorms over southern Klamath County, which should be under thicker smoke. In any case, storms will be capable of producing some gusty outflows with the well defined inverted V sounding. Storms in the forecasts persists into Saturday, albeit with lower probabilities compared to today.