From Seattle station KOMO:
Gentle wind wreaks havoc with Olympic Peninsula temperatures
The Olympic Peninsula's incredible rugged beauty is a siren song to nature lovers across the globe.
But if you visit in the summer…be sure to dress in layers.
A gentle, seemingly harmless wind caused some crazy temperature swings even as the sun shone unabated across the entire peninsula.
Let's start in Forks, where Thursday was a toasty warm day anyway. A light southwesterly breeze wasn't enough to really cool them off, but it was enough to hold temperatures in the upper 70s.
Then at 2:55 p.m., the thermal trough arrived, bringing an east/northeast wind and with it, a virtual blowtorch. Forks is in a somewhat unique location with the Olympic Mountains to their east that when an east wind blows, it sinks down the western slopes of the mountains, where the compressing air warms further. In this case, the temperature shot up all the way to 95 degrees -- in just 35 minutes!
The eventual high temperature was 96 degrees in Forks -- the second hottest August reading on record there behind a 98 degree reading on Aug. 9, 1981.
Quite the shift - I love living out here except for thunderstorms. I really miss them.
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