Summer’s here. How cool is that?

Published 1:30 am Thursday, July 21, 2016

EVERETT — If the start of the summer has seemed unusually cool, gray and wet, you’re not imagining it.

Nor should you worry about it. This is what a normal summer in the Pacific Northwest looks like.

The past two summers set many record-high temperatures.

“Were we spoiled by the last couple of years?” said Ted Buehner, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“Realistically, we’re warmer than average for April, May and June,” he said. “Even after (Monday) we’re right on the nose for the month of July.”

In April, temperatures were 4.9 degrees higher than average at Everett Community College. In May, they were 2 degrees higher, and they were 1.5 degrees higher in June.

The past three months also were drier than average, even with the heavy rain that fell June 14 and 15.

“Since roughly the latter part of June, the West Coast has been in what’s called a long-wave trough position,” Buehner said.

It’s a broad, low-pressure area over the Pacific coast and bracketed by high pressure areas in the middle of the ocean and in the interior of the continent.

It has nothing to do with the El Niño or La Niña weather systems, which only impact the tropical storm season, and by extension, our winter weather.

The previous El Niño from last winter has died out.

El Niño systems have warmer tropical waters, and the jet stream tends to remain down near California, the Gulf Coast and the southeastern United States.

In the Northwest, we get drier than average winters.

La Niñas are the opposite. The Mt. Baker record for snow — 1,140 inches — was set during the La Niña winter of 1998-99.

Right now, Buehner said, the Pacific Northwest is in a neutral in-between period, but he estimated that there’s a 60-65 percent chance we’ll have a La Niña winter.

In the meantime, we can prepare for a sunnier summer going forward.

“It looks like the weather pattern is going to slowly but surely ease out of this,” Buehner said.

Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.