A hot one!

It was August 8, 1981, and the Willamette Valley was toasty. I was trying to finish up my PhD prospectus at Oregon State, as I recall, and the non-air conditioned Ag Hall was just too hot. I headed home after a long day, and we decided to head up to Silver Falls State Park the next morning with our camping gear and our (then) 3 kids to escape the heat. The campground, and all Cascades-area campgrounds were already full. But a kindly park ranger told us there were some spots open on the coast, so off we went.

By the time we arrived, the coast campsites were full (traffic was awful!) so they were letting valley refugees set up camp at waysides. Tents were everywhere! And it was a glorious 58°F almost round-the-clock. Many non-weather-ready people had no sweatshirts or jackets with them so I imagine the shops did a brisk business.

And they'll do so this week, too, as the exodus occurs. Forecasts are for 3-5 days of 100°F or greater across the lowlands in western Oregon this week, so it will be a nice dry run to see if the east-west highways are ready for the eclipse in 3 weeks.  For those of you in Eugene, here are the observations for that week in August when it was so hot, and which set some records which may fall:

It remains to be seen how competitive this week's event will be across the valley compared to that one. Mainly I post this just to remind people that heat waves are not just occurring due to human-caused global warming. They are not unprecedented. However, they will likely be more commonplace as warming takes hold. And as always, use the National Weather Service for your forecast guidance - no hype, just taxpayer funded forecasts from the professionals.