Clouds and showers to linger into next week, but fire danger remains

People in the Puget Sound have been using the word “muggy” a lot over the past couple of days to describe the balmy, humid feeling that’s generally foreign to us, according to a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.

That’s because — though high temperatures are fairly typical for this time of year — the dew point has been coming in at about 60 or a little higher, according to meteorologist Dana Felton.

“Somebody from the South would be laughing, because that’s nice to them, but we normally get dew points in the low to mid-50s, so that’s high for us,” he said.

Stickiness aside, Felton said the unsettled weather system we’ve been seeing over the past week is likely to hang around for the immediate, foreseeable future.

The high-pressure ridges that usually come hang out this time of year, bringing heat and dry weather, are nowhere in sight at the moment, he said.

“We’re not able to shake this pattern right now,” he said. “I don’t see any strong ridges moving into the area in the next couple weeks, and I’m not looking at any really warm temperatures.”

That means we’ll likely continue to see cloudy mornings with sun breaks in the afternoons and some chances of showers through the weekend and at least next week.

Friday is looking like the warmest day of the batch, with clouds in the morning, sun in the afternoon and a high temperature that’s predicted to reach the high 70s or perhaps 80, Felton said.

It’s expected to be a couple degrees cooler on Saturday, and there’s a chance of showers on Sunday, Felton said.

The continued rainfall and the .77 inches of rain recorded so far this month at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport — which is slightly above the normal rainfall for the whole month of July — aren’t likely to have a significant impact on the wildfire season overall.

“It’s slowing things down, and we’ve seen a lot less fire activity this year than the last couple of years,” Felton said. But the region remains drier than normal and in the “whole big scheme of things, it’s not really enough.”