Currently in Portland — June 9, 2023: Just about perfect

The weather, currently.

Y'all, I am so glad it's Friday. I don't know about you, but this has been one of the longest weeks ever, for me. And I'm delighted to see that the weather is going to be just about perfect (IMHO.) We're going to have a few beautiful clouds in the sky, and temps will reach that sweet spot of the mid-70s, where it's undeniably warm, without being uncomfortably hot. Friday night will cool into the low 50s before warming back up to around 80 for Saturday. Sunday will climb up to around 87, at which point I'll start complaining that it's too hot. In non-local news, our friends on the east coast are suffering from terrible air quality, thanks to smoke from wildfires. My friend in NY let me know she had new empathy for what we too often deal with over here in the PNW.

— Stella Harris

What you need to know, currently.

El Niño has arrived, officially.

On Thursday, NOAA issued an El Niño advisory, meaning that two things have happened: 1) the temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean is now unusually warm, and 2) the atmosphere above the tropical Pacific has shifted in response — favoring drier weather over Southeast Asia and Australia, and wetter weather over western South America.

El Niño is the world’s most powerful and important weather pattern, and recurs on average once every 3-5 years. When it does, it adds tremendous amounts of energy to the world’s weather, shifting everything from hurricane development to droughts, floods, and fires in almost every part of the globe. It’s like global warming on steroids.

There’s now a 56% chance that this El Niño becomes ‘strong’ — defined as a warming of the central tropical Pacific Ocean more than 1.5°C. The last time that happened was 2015-16 when El Niño sent global temperatures soaring to a new record high, kicked off the worst drought in the Caribbean in 500 years, and prompted a surge in global carbon emissions from wildfires in Australia, Indonesia, and North America.

-Eric Holthaus

What you can do, currently.

Welcome to the new-and-improved Currently!

If you’re a big fan of Currently, please share us with a friend! Our brand-new referral program is a way to give our biggest fans direct ownership of our company. We are the first weather service in the world to do this, and we’ll have much more in the coming days on our hopes and dreams for member-ownership, as well as Currently as a whole.

Thank you for taking this exciting journey with us!

—Eric Holthaus