When Will the Rain Start in Portland?

We had a bit of a false fall last week, with the rain and cooler weather — not that anyone wanted to call it that.

We celebrate the arrival of spring and sun, but rain? Not so much. So I checked in yesterday with the National Weather Service’s Portland office and talked to Tyler Kranz, lead meteorologist, about how much more sunny warm weather we can expect.

Did we have a false fall last week? Was the weather unusual?

“Well, yes and no. Aug. 21 to Aug. 24 were much cooler and even had rain and then the thunderstorm. [But] It wasn’t record-breaking.

“People might say, ‘Oh, this August was a lot colder than normal.’ But actually, that's not the case. It's actually slightly warmer than normal…. We are a little wetter than normal, not by a ton, but definitely enough to notice it.”

How about the summer overall?

“It's funny because the past five years or so, we've had these super dry, hot summers that have extended all the way through August and September. Hardly a drop of rain at all. But I think that's actually kind of skewing the general public's opinion of what summer is supposed to be like here. The summer we're having right now is actually more typical of what our climate used to be.”

When should we expect the rain to really start this year?

“From now through [at least] Sept. 20, we're actually expecting above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation. It looks like October is when we actually start trending toward wetter-than-normal precipitation.”

“People have one month left of summer.”