Nice Thursday, then hot and windy heading into the weekend

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - It’s shaping up to be a pretty nice Wednesday evening. It’s much more comfortable out there than it was yesterday, but still warm with 3 p.m. temperatures hovering in the low 80s. The few remaining clouds will clear out tonight, and it’ll be a nice crisp start to the day Thursday with temperatures in the low to mid 50s for most of the Portland area. Some of the outlying areas will be in the 40s. Our high temperature will top out around 80 degrees. A nice day!

We’ll heat up much more quickly on Friday with a warm east wind, reaching into the low 90s. It’ll still be breezy on Saturday and high temperatures will be even hotter, climbing into the mid 90s.

The big story here is the fire weather danger since this is our first significant east wind event of the season. That east wind will really kick up Friday around midday. Fuels are very dry considering we haven’t seen rain in a couple months. A red flag warning is in effect for the Cascades and most of central and eastern Oregon through tonight, and the western valleys along with the Coast Range is under a fire weather watch Friday morning through Saturday.

We’ll start cooling back down on Sunday, and it’s starting to look more like early September as we cool into the mid to upper 70s under partly cloudy skies next week.

Copyright 2022 KPTV-KPDX. All rights reserved.