It might have felt like a cooler and drearier July than usual, but Vancouver’s temperatures actually landed very close to normal for the month.
Here’s the difference: This summer has almost completely lacked extremes so far. Vancouver still hasn’t cracked the 90-degree barrier all year, and neither has the Portland International Airport. You have to go all the way back to 1993 to find another July in Portland without a 90-degree day, according to local weather expert Steve Pierce.
“It’s pretty much just average,” said Liana Ramirez, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland. “Nothing spectacular.”
Just two years ago, Portland saw 14 days of 90 degrees or more in July 2009. That included a run of three straight 100-plus scorchers near the end of the month.
This year? Not even close.
Vancouver saw an average high temperature of 77 degrees in July, just barely below the normal average of 77.3. Low temperatures for the month averaged out to 55.8 degrees — actually above the normal 53.5, according to the National Weather Service.
“We just have a lot of systems that are tracking farther south than they normally would,” Ramirez said.
Rather than drifting over Canada, many of those systems have hit the Northwest head on, Ramirez said. That doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of rain, she said, but enough clouds and cool air to keep temperatures down. For Seattle, University of Washington researchers found this to be the second-cloudiest spring on record. The cloudiest was last year.
Don’t expect spectacular changes in Vancouver’s weather pattern anytime soon. This week’s forecast calls for high temperatures to hover in the low 80s and high 70s for several days, according to the National Weather Service.
