Another Hot Summer Ahead For Washington: Farmers’ Almanac

SEATTLE — Following the record-breaking and deadly run of summer heat in 2021, and another above-average fire season, Puget Sound may be heading for some very hot and dry months ahead — along with much of the United States.

Last summer, Seattle logged its hottest day in more than 150 years of records, reaching 108 degrees on the third day of unrelenting, triple-digit heat across the Pacific Northwest in late June. Before then, the Emerald City had only hit the 100-degree mark four times, according to the University of Washington. Nearly 200 people died from the heat in Washington and Oregon, and the true toll may have included hundreds more.

While it's too soon to know whether this year's heat will be as dramatic or dangerous, current outlooks are in agreement: This summer is likely to be another hot and dry one, here and elsewhere.

Summer 2022 in a word: Sizzling, according to the Farmers’ Almanac summer forecast prediction.

Here are three more words to describe the weather ahead in the season many of us take our vacations, move our living rooms outside to the patio and spend more time outdoors:

Scorching. Broiling. Blistering.

And here’s one more phrase to keep in mind heading into summer, which officially starts June 21 with the summer solstice:

Big thunderstorms.

Generally, storminess will mark the transition from spring to summer, especially along the Eastern Seaboard and the Great Lakes regions, according to the Farmers’ Almanac.

Summer will be “a hot one nationwide,” the Farmers’ Almanac said. The closest thing to a mild summer will be in New England and the Great Lakes region, but that prediction is based on a wave of cool air arriving in September, according to the Farmers’ Almanac.

According to the forecast, the dog days of summer in late July are expected to be “brutally hot,” with highs in the 90s and triple digits, and “blistering hot” temperatures are expected to persist over Central and Western states.

The worst of the heat should be over by mid-August, though, the almanac said.

Rainfall is expected to be about normal in the middle of the country, including in the Great Lakes and north and south-central United States; above normal in the Southeast; and below normal in the Northeast.

Drought conditions are expected to persist in the Southwest, where even the Desert Southwest monsoon rains aren’t expected to deliver any drought relief. The Pacific states will be unusually dry as well, according to the almanac.

Those expectations align with current long-range outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center, which favor above-average temperatures for most of the United States between June and August, with even odds for heat in Western Washington. Over the same timeframe, climatologists also expect drier conditions will win out across the Pacific Northwest.

Probabilities grow in the mid-to-late summer period for high heat on both sides of the Cascades, from July through September, while the precipitation outlook improves for Western Washington. The Climate Prediction Center updates its long-range forecasts regularly, and this year's official summer outlook will be due closer to the solstice.

The vast majority of Washington remains under a drought emergency declaration issued last July, excluding the watersheds around Seattle, Everett and Tacoma. Though the declaration is scheduled to expire in June, state ecology officials could extend it if things take a turn for the worse.

"Several streams in Southeastern Washington — including the Walla Walla River, the Palouse River, Hangman Creek and the Little Spokane River — are forecasted to have low flows this year," the state Department of Ecology wrote Monday. "Conditions have improved since last summer, but even if the state receives unusually heavy snow and rainfall in the next few months, it is very unlikely it will be enough to negate the ongoing water supply deficits in much of Eastern Washington."