Seasonal and sunny for now, but turning much hotter after the 4th

Today : Monday will start off with partly cloudy skies for some, but clouds will eventually breach and give way to mostly sunny to sunny skies. There could be a stray thunderstorm, or two, in the Cascades, Kittitas Valley, and the foothills of the Blues–but don’t bank on it. It’ll be a toasty one, but highs will only be a couple degrees above average. It’ll be in the low to mid-60s in the Cascades and Blues, with low to mid-80s in the Kittitas/Yakima valleys and Blue Foothills. The Lower Columbia Basin will flirt with 90-degrees. Otherwise, today will be a breezy to windy one depending on where you are. West-northwesterly wind gusts will gust between 20-45 MPH, with the strongest wind gusts easily being in the Kittitas Valley.

Tonight : Skies stay clear to mostly clear tonight, and winds will calm down. However, they could still gust out of the west-northwest between 20-25 MPH–especially for the Kittitas/Yakima valleys and the Blue Foothills. Overnight lows will be fairly seasonal. It’ll be in the mid-40s in the Cascades and Blues, with low to mid-50s for the Kittitas/Yakima valleys and the Lower Columbia Basin. Expect upper-50s for the foothills of the Blues.

Extended : Our weather will essentially be the same for Tuesday and Wednesday. We’ll have plenty of sunshine, and highs will still be just about on par for early July. However, all of that changes starting on the 4th of July. By then, highs will rise to about 5-10 degrees above average (mid-90s in the Tri-Cities). We trend even hotter for Friday through Saturday, as highs will jump to values 10-15-degrees above average (near 100-degrees in the Tri-Cities).

The heatwave for Friday through Sunday will trigger multiple First Alert High Impact Fire Days. On Friday, this goes for Kittitas and Yakima counties (fire fuel energy in the 83rd percentile), and the Blue Mountains (fire fuel energy in the 78th percentile). By Saturday, we’ll lump the Lower Columbia Basin into the mix as well (fire fuel energy into the 75th percentile). Sunday looks to be an even more volatile atmosphere for fire starts. Please, we beg of you, to leave the fireworks to the professionals as we head into the hotter and drier weather!

​COPYRIGHT 2024 BY APPLE VALLEY NEWS NOW. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.