Synopsis
Troughing developing over the area will continue into this weekend, bringing unsettled conditions and cooler temperatures to the region. Ridging looks to rebuild through the first half of next week for a slow warming trend.
Plaincast — the National Weather Service forecast, decoded into plain English
Plaincast
What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, decoded into plain English.
Plaincast decodes the National Weather Service's Area Forecast Discussion — the real forecast, written 3 to 4 times a day by the meteorologist on shift — into plain English. The discussion is where a forecaster explains their reasoning: which models disagree, what they are watching, and how confident they are. Below is the current edition for Seattle, with its shorthand expanded. The full experience — an AI plain-English summary beside the annotated original — loads with JavaScript, and every one of the 68 forecast offices has its own edition.
Short Term
An upper level trough over the region will continue to bring onshore flow, cooler temperatures, and unsettled weather to western Washington over the next couple of days. It'll deepen today as its associated upper-low forms off the BC coast and positions offshore by this evening. As a result, light shower activity is possible over the Olympic Peninsula tonight but conditions are to remain mostly dry across the area. Highs today will top out in the 60s to near 70 F with overnight lows in the 50s.
The upper-low will traverse across the region on Saturday, bringing widespread rain, showers and a 15-20% chance for thunderstorms. The highest probability for lightning is over the Olympics and southwest interior according to the the blend-of-models forecast. It'll hang around through Sunday with continued precipitation chances but the thunderstorm threat will diminish with probabilities less than 10%. High temperatures ranging between the 60s to near 70 F and lows mainly in the 50s for both Saturday and Sunday.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Seattle discussion at /o/SEW/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.
Data from the National Weather Service. Translated by Claude. About · For developers & agents · Subscribe: RSS feed for this office · Source on GitHub