On the first day of summer, summer finally showed up.
As predicted, Tuesday was a glorious day in Portland. And by afternoon, the temperature had already hit a small record, as the warmest day of 2022 so far, when it hit 81 degrees at Portland International Airport around 4 p.m.
“Before today,” said Shawn Weagle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland, “we had only reached 80 degrees once this year.”
And 81 was just the beginning. “It could tick up a couple degrees,” Weagle said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up with 82, 83.”
The sunshine and warmth are a welcome reprieve for Portlanders who have spent much of the last month in raincoats.
So far, June has seen a total of 3.09 inches of rain at the airport, making it the seventh wettest June on record, Weagle said. The wettest was June 2010, when Portland got 4.27 inches of rain at the airport. But even that wasn’t as wet as 1888, before the airport, when Portland measured 5.38 inches of rain in June.
With any luck, though, Weagle doesn’t think this June has a chance of breaking those records. As of now, rain is possible at the very end of the month, he said. But it’s still only a possibility.
Anyway, the good news — if you like warm weather — is that it looks like summer for at least a little while. The rest of the week through Thursday should be “typical early summer weather,” Weagle said, with temperatures in the mid-70s into the low 80s.
This weekend, Portland is expected to get two days of temperatures in the 90s.
Time to find your sunscreen, wide-brimmed sunhats and long-sleeve UV blocking shirts, folks. It’s finally summer in Portland.
— Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052 lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker