A late-season cold spell brought back frost, visible breath and dialed up heating units.
But it’s nearly time — again — for those symbols of winter to be shelved.
“The air mass over the local area has already produced record cold temperatures for this time of the year,” said Steve Pierce, a Vancouver resident and executive board member of the Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society.
Tuesday’s high temperature of just 50 degrees at Portland International Airport was the coldest daytime high recorded there for May 4, Pierce said. “The old record stood for 60 years and was set in 1950,” he said. “Tuesday was also just one degree shy of the all-time coldest May daytime high of 49 degrees, set back in May of 1962 and again in May of 1964.”
The weather service issued a frost advisory for the region Wednesday afternoon, warning that outdoor plants could be killed if left uncovered. Frost was forecasted as possible between 2 and 8 a.m. today.
Pierce said historical frost and freeze records show that Portland International Airport averages its last 36-degree overnight low of the season on April 26. The last 32-degree overnight low temperature is normally reached for the final time of the season on March 30.
“It’s been a little bit colder than what we normally see this time of the season,” Tiffani Brown, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland, said Wednesday. “The last two days brought a cold trough we normally see in late February and early March.”
In the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday morning, at 4:02 a.m., the mercury dropped to 37 degrees, according to the National Weather Service website. The record low for May 5 is 30 degrees.
The all-time record low for the month of May in Vancouver was 28 degrees on May 12, 1985, according to weather service records reviewed by Pierce. Data from the Weather Underground showed two 28-degree days, May 11 and May 12, 1985.
Daily highs this week have hovered in the mid-50s, Brown said. Blustery winds and sporadic hail storms have been mixed in.
“Most of the lows stayed in the lows 40s,” said Brown, who expects temperatures to climb into the 60s today and even higher Friday.
For May 6, the record low is 31 degrees. The lowest high temperature record on a May 6 in Vancouver is 50 degrees. The daily average for May 6 and 7 is 64 degrees.
Today’s predicted high is 62 degrees. The weather service is predicting a 67-degree high on Friday.
“Quite an improvement over (Tuesday),” Brown said.
