Excessive heat returns to Northwest, Idaho today

After a few days of slightly cooler weather, the pattern of blistering summer heat will return this weekend, according to the National Weath-er Service.

The Weather Service’s Spokane office is predicting a high today of 102 degrees, with hazy skies and wind gusts of as high as 20 mph. That will be followed by a forecasted high of 101 on Monday and then hovering around the century mark through Wedensday.

In Boise, the NWS has issued an excessive heat warning through Monday night. Tempera-tures are expected to reach 102 degrees today and 101 on Monday.

The hot temperatures also will bedevil southern and western Idaho. Today, the highs in Emmett and Mountain Home are forecast to be 105 degrees. In Caldwell, it’s expected to be 102.

“There’s an upper level ridge of high pressure, right now centered over the Great Basin, but tomorrow and into Monday it’s going to expand north,” Spencer Tangen, a meteorologist with the NWS, told the Idaho Statesman by phone. He added that the direction of wind blowing into the Treasure Valley will shift from the west to the southwest, bringing warmer air up from desert climates.

Smoke also is expected to continue to hover in the region, as air from fires in Oregon and California continues to blow east and north.

The smoke currently aloft in the Treasure Valley is mostly from the Dixie Fire in Northern California, according to Tangen.

In part because of the smoke’s ability to block sunlight, temperatures fell somewhat earlier this week, marking a reprieve from the nine days of 100-degree plus heat in Boise so far this month.

“While the last couple of days have brought below normal temperatures for most of us, it’s back into the frying pan this weekend as the heat intensifies,” the NWS tweeted on Friday.

An international team of climate experts found earlier this month that the scorching heat wave in the Pacific Northwest at the end of June would have been “virtually impossible” without the effects of human-caused climate change.