It’s been hot, but Spokane can expect a little relief soon

Spokane is feeling the effects of what might be Earth’s hottest month on record. Temperatures reached as high as 102 degrees about 3 miles west of Mead on Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.

Looking at this year’s May, June and July, “We have had about 2½ months of well above-average temperatures,” said Greg Koch of the National Weather Service in Spokane.

With an average temperature of 67.3 degrees from May 1 to Thursday, Spokane is experiencing one of its warmest May-through-July stretches on record, second only to 2015.

Spokanites have some relief to look forward to, though.

“The good news is a strong cold front will move through the region Sunday night into Monday, pushing our temperatures down into the 80s for much of next week,” Koch said. “The 80s are where we typically should be, looking at our 30-year average.”

As for the small amount of haze Spokane has been experiencing, Koch attributes the smoke to several areas.

“The haze is a combination of smoke from Canada, a couple small local fires, and there’s also the Flat fire, which is a pretty large fire in the southwest corner of Oregon,” Koch said.

While Koch expects a variation in the haziness of Spokane skies within the next few days, “the continuation of a dry forecast region-wide is not good news for us experiencing a lot of clear-sky, haze-free days.”

Koch said lightning that struck Thursday just north of the Canadian border in British Columbia could make the haze persist.

“We will be watching to see if any new fire starts occurred,” he said. “If any of that lightning would develop significant fires just across the border, those fires would be a lot closer than any of the fires currently bringing smoke into our region.”

Roberta Simonson, of Deer Park High School, is a member of The Spokesman-Review’s Teen Journalism Institute, a paid high school summer internship program funded by Bank of America and Innovia Foundation. As the only paid high school newspaper internship in the nation, it is for local students between the ages of 16 and 18 who work directly with senior editors and reporters in the newsroom. All stories written by these interns can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information, please contact our newspaper’s managing editor. Simonson can be reached at (509) 459-5451 or by email at robertas@spokesman.com.