WeatherWatcher: Another weekend, another rain maker

 

Bear Gulch Fire flared up during Tuesday's heatwave
View from Picnic Point September 16, 2025. Photo by Carl Dinse

As if like clockwork for the Pacific Northwest, we have sunny dry weather during the work week, and rain showers arriving just in time for the weekend. This weekend graced us with a decent Saturday, though Sunday will be much cooler and wetter. After Sunday's rains, we return to sunny weather for the work week.

Langley Hill Radar image as of Saturday September 20th, at 10:58 PM PDT.

As of late Saturday evening, there is an impressive image on the radar of our next rainmaker already pushing on to the northwestern Washington coast. Models have been quite inconsistent in how much rain we might expect in Shoreline and Lake Forest Park, however.

There are some ideas that a convergence zone may set up and give us extra rain, and some other ideas that we may get a lot of Olympic Mountain rain shadowing effect. As a result, the range of rain we could see may be anywhere from a tenth of an inch to around three quarters of an inch of rain over the next 24 hours.

After we get through Sunday, our weather clears back up and goes back to our late summer sunny weather pattern of sunny days and clear nights with high temperatures on either side of 70°F and lows in the 50's. There are hints that by next weekend more rain showers will return. There are no heat waves expected next week.

Last week's highlights:

• Highest temperature: 90°F (Tuesday)
• Lowest temperature: 49°F (Friday morning)
• Rainiest Day: 0.04" (Sunday)
• Average temperature for last week: 62.9°F, (2.4°F above average thanks to Tuesday's heatwave).

Daily High and Low Temperatures for September at the Echo Lake Weather Station
 compared to average.

We had a very short-lived heatwave arrive on Tuesday. Forecasts last week had suggested we'd get to near 80°F, but then Monday night models changed and suggested we could see upper 80's. We ended up just breaking 90°F on Tuesday, in what is only the second time this summer we've reached 90°F in Shoreline. Sea-Tac is a different story, though as it's usually a bit warmer there.

Total accumulated rain for September 2025 at the Echo Lake Weather Station.

Our degrading cold front that brought us rain showers last Sunday brought less rain than forecasted, with 0.04" of rain total at both of my Shoreline weather stations. We are still far below average for the month but still have plenty of time to catch up.

For current weather conditions please visit www.shorelineweather.com