Close, but no cigar.
The thermometer at Sea-Tac Airport stopped just shy of 70 degrees this afternoon, leveling out at 69 and thereby denying us our first 70-degree March day in nearly a decade. Regardless, the spectacular early spring warmth, framed by wall-to-wall sunshine, made for a spectacular Easter Sunday—the city’s second in a row, following a 70-degree reading in Seattle last April 8.
The balmy temperatures arrived courtesy of a dome of high pressure overhead, which also allowed us to rise to 68 degrees yesterday and the mid 60s on Friday. Combined with the warm weather we experienced earlier last week, today marked the seventh consecutive day of above-average temperatures in Seattle—with one more to come.
Tomorrow will start out a little different than the past few days, however, as a shift in the wind sends a batch of clouds squirting through the Chehalis Gap and up into Puget Sound. The clouds should make it to Seattle by sunrise, lingering for a few hours before rapidly burning off in the late morning. By lunchtime, mostly sunny skies will prevail, with temperatures climbing back into the mid 60s during the afternoon.
Things turn a little gloomier on Tuesday as a thicker band of clouds blows in from the Pacific, hovering over the metro area from dawn to dusk. A few peaks of sunshine are possible in the afternoon, but by-and-large, it’ll be a cloudy day. Temperatures will also drop back into the mid 50s—normal for early April, but nothing like the warmth we’ve grown accustomed to recently.
Fortunately, the sun bounces back on Wednesday, with the mercury reaching into lower 60s as a brief ridge of high pressure slides over us. A fast-moving frontal system then races through the region on Thursday, returning us to the familiar wet-and-gray. With the rain coming at us from the southwest, though, we won’t cool down all that much—temperatures should still rise into the upper 50s by the end of the day.
Granted, that’s a far cry from today’s weather, but after such a picture-perfect weekend, who could complain?
