PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — We are currently working through a toasty August month.
There are a few more days of heat to endure, but we are currently experiencing the warmest August on record in Portland. With temperatures in the upper 90s Tuesday and again in the 90s on Wednesday (plus mild overnight temps), we are just about solidified in this endeavor.
We now have had 10 days at 90 degrees or above in Portland, with six overnight temperatures in the mid 60s and even one morning in the lower 70s. We had a few record-breaking morning temperatures with that.
You may be thinking 74.7 degrees doesn’t seem all that warm. Well, this isn’t the average high temperature, this is the average high and low temperature over the span of one month.
We are currently 4.0 degrees above our typical August average. That means we should be down near 70.6 degrees (30-year average). Some of the other warm August months on record have come in recent summer years. Last year is number five on the list, and the toasty August month of 2017 is number two. We do have a feisty August month from 1967 that is holding on to the top five. Looking into the ENSO cycles of these years, there is little crossover outside of 2021 and 2022 supporting a moderate La Niña.
NOT ONLY THE WARMEST AUGUST…
This is also the warmest one-month mean on record for the Portland airport.
What does that mean? We haven’t had a collective month warmer than this going back to 1941. That is as far back as we have records at the airport. The previous record was the scorcher of July 1985, which had a mean temperature of 74.1 degrees. We are currently working through the warmest August on record and the warmest month on record.
Like the previous list, many of the warmest months on record fall in the last 7 years. Also of note, you can see that July tends to be the month that brings in serious heat around here.
This month has brought in multiple heat waves and we have doubled our average 90-degree days for the month. Going back through the years, the month of August usually has about five 90-degree days. We are expected to finish at 11.
This is what the last two weeks look like as far as our high and low temperatures are concerned. We’ve had plenty of above-average afternoons and mornings!
