Weather 2024: A weirdly warm, wet and recording-breaking year for Spokane

It’s official: 2024 is the fourth-hottest year in Spokane’s recorded history.

Smack in the middle, we experienced a July so scorching that it became the city’s hottest month since daily recording began in 1881. Not only that, but the entire summer was abnormally warm, as was the month of September.

Besides warmth, we experienced some other big weather events, including a giant wall of dust that barreled through the Inland Northwest, a powerful windstorm, and an unusually wet and dreary November and December.

Recent conditions have been so mild and rainy – Santa could barely land his sleigh to deliver presents – that it’s hard to remember the severe cold snap that gripped the Inland Northwest a year ago in January. That being the case, here’s a look at 2024’s top weather events, from the beginning.

January 2024 was barely underway when an Arctic air mass plunged south from Canada, encasing our region in subzero temperatures. On Jan. 11, Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown declared a state of emergency due to frigid conditions brought on by cold air and brisk winds. On Jan. 13, the overnight low dropped to minus-10 degrees, making it the coldest day of 2024. (The average low for Jan. 13 is 22 degrees.)

In midspring, we enjoyed a spate of summerlike days, with the first surge of 80-degree weather arriving by May 10. Then came June, which ran 2 degrees above normal for that month. The warmth was a mere flicker of what would soon follow.

With an average high of 92.6 degrees, July was hotter than any other month in Spokane’s recorded history. Each day from July 1-24, we endured temperatures that ran well above normal – often by more than 10 degrees. On July 21, the mercury soared to 107 degrees, making it the hottest day of 2024 and the fourth-hottest day on record for the city.

By the close of August, prolonged stretches of heat and dryness drove Spokane to notch its third-hottest summer in recorded history. From June 1-Aug. 31, temperatures ran 4.3 degrees warmer than the long-term summertime average. What’s more, the area received only 1.12 inches of rainfall, which is 1.23 inches less than average.

The main driver of our intense summer conditions was a series of high-pressure systems that anchored themselves over the western United States. Each system trapped hot, dry air toward the ground, like a lid on a pan. Then, just as one system would drift east or dissipate, another one would build up.

This atmospheric pattern continued into September, making it the Spokane area’s second-hottest September on record. The only September that was hotter occurred in 1938.

We barely had time to put the fans away when, on Sept. 25, a huge dust storm swept across Eastern Washington and North Idaho. Late that afternoon, a churning wall of dust turned the skies brown, disrupted traffic and cut power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses. What caused it? The arrival of a cold front produced strong winds that whipped up dust from dry, recently plowed fields.

In November, twice as much precipitation fell than normal, which is a lot. And talk about a slogfest – November through December yielded the most precipitation since 1973, much of it in the form of rainfall at lower elevations. In fact, it was the second-wettest November-December period in our area since 1900. Much of the moisture was caused by a parade of atmospheric rivers, where long, narrow plumes of water vapor form over the Pacific Ocean and unload rain, snow and winds when they reach land.

On Dec. 18, gusts reaching almost 70 mph were reported at Spokane International Airport as a windstorm fueled by an atmospheric river downed trees and power lines. A large tree fell onto U.S. Highway 2, striking a commercial box truck and killing two men inside.

Christmas Day, more beige than white, was 7 degrees warmer than average for that date. Although the year closed with above-average precipitation, it came not from snow but mostly from rainfall during November and December.

As we enter the first full week of 2025, snowfall in the Spokane area is about half of normal for this time of year. Weather is on everyone’s lips, it seems. When will the rain stop and the snow stick around? Enough of the gloominess – how about a clear, sunny day?

If the short-term forecast is accurate, we can expect more seasonal temperatures punctuated with areas of fog, a few snow flurries and mostly cloudy skies with occasional peeks of the sun.

And, gratefully, less rain.

Nic Loyd is a meteorologist in Washington state. Linda Weiford is a science writer in Moscow, Idaho, who’s also a weather geek.