NOt a whole lot of warming going on for portland Octobers

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Over the last 20 years, the climatic average temperature in Portland, Oregon, has increased only 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit, based on National Weather Service temperature records and a 30-year rolling average of these temperatures ending in October 2025.

The coolest October in Portland occurs only 6 years ago in 2019, and the warmest is only four years ago in 2022.

Soap box moment:  The Western World (Oregon and Milwaukie, too) is tying itself in economic restrictions over a degree or two in climatic warming.  In the words of Louisiana's U.S Senator John Kennedy: "Dummer than a bag of hammers." 

 There is also his saying (paraphrasing):  This is one of the reasons, aliens lock their space craft doors while flying past earth.  They don't want to come down with such mind viruses.

(posted by Elvis Clark on November 2, 2025)

What is interesting is that Portland has three months from February to April which show no warming trend, but the summer months June through August show a definite warming trend.

The Portland International Airport is the Portland Oregon area's benchmark temperature gauge, including Milwaukie Oregon.  For the month of September, the Portland area's temperature has warmed only 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit in the last ten years, on a thirty-year average basis.

This raises the question that maybe it is a clearer atmosphere that is leading the warming of the Portland area, and not so much the rise of greenhouse gases.  Government policy, even in Milwaukie, is centered around restricting fossil fuel use in order to lower carbon dioxide emissions.

But seeing how parts of the year when the sun over Portland is of shorter duration than in summer show no to little warming, raises the specter that it is paradoxically the cleaning of other pollutants (non-greenhouse gases), led by efficiencies in the burning of fossil fuels, that is causing the warming of Portland area summers.

I ask Google's Artificial Intelligence three questions and get the three responses in the three-photo panel just below here.  

The three responses from Google AI seem to lend credence to the thought that it is clearer air which may be the lead cause of Portland's summertime warming.

(posted by Elvis Clark on October 5, 2025)

Above is the bar chart for average around-the-clock temperature for each August, dating back to the year 1950, for the Portland Oregon area - as measured at the benchmark weather station Portland Airport by the National Weather Service, a branch of the federal government.

Interestingly, the first half of August 2025 averages about 72 degrees Fahrenheit (PDX) while the last half of August 2025 averages 74.7 degrees (F).  Thus, I am calling it the tale of 2 halves.

Even as August 2025 is hot, the entire meteorological Sumer 2025 (June through August) turns out to be the coolest summer in the last five years, revealing that former Mayor Gamba is not very good at predicting summer weather in the Portland area.  Gamba wrote in late August 2021 that Summer 2021 would become regarded as a cool summer going forward, unless fossil fuel use is immediately shuttered.  For more on this reality check against Climate Alarmist Gamba's 2021 claim, see "lost In Translation,' 'Climate Realities.'

(posted by Elvis Clark on September 2, 2025)

Climate Change for the Portland-Milwaukie area is showing mostly during the summer months it seems, as there are several other months of the year that don't show much of any trend in temperature.

July for Portland-Milwaukie is warming at a rate of about 1.2 degrees (F) per decade.  But looking back, July 1985 is pretty hot - being only 0.4 degrees cooler than the average temperature recorded in July of 2024, which is the record, as measured at the Portland airport.

Former Mayor Gamba, wrote at the end of August 2021, that summers would be only warmer after the summer of 2021 (unless somehow fossil fuels were eliminated almost immediately, which isn't happening).  Well, the last three summers have been cooler than the Summer of 2021, and it is extremely likely that this summer will be yet again cooler than the summer of 2021.

  Politicians like Gamba like to scare people, so as to gain power over them.  

(posted by Elvis Clark on August 2, 2025)

June 2025 is 1.3 degrees warmer than the 30-year average for June.   

If you recall former Mayor Gamba says in late August of the year 2021 in the Milwaukie Pilot:  "The terrifying thing to realize is that this will be the coolest summer (2021) for the rest of our lives unless dramatic action is taken."

Since Mad Man Gamba made this weather prediction, whatever dramatic action Gamba talks of did not occur, especially as carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has increased at an accelerating rate since Summer 2021.  And yet, all three summers since Gamba's prediction have been cooler than the Summer of 2021, as measured by the average temperature recorded at the benchmark Portland Airport temperature gage station.

And with June 2025 coming in some 5 degrees cooler than June 2021, Summer 2025 is very likely to be also cooler than the Summer of 2021.

Representative Gamba operates on faulty presumptions.  The proof is being borne out in the real world.  The world's ecosystems are not failing catastrophically.

(posted by Elvis Clark on July 1, 2025)

Over the last 30 years, dating back to the 1990s, the Portland area for May climate has become a little more than one degree Fahrenheit warmer.  Interestingly, February through April in Portland are not showing a warming climate, as 30 year average temperature has been flat for the last 20 to 30 years.

Generally, according to Google's Artificial Intelligence system, winters should become warmer with man-made climate change, but that February, March and April show no such warming trend suggests, to me, that other natural factors are at play in driving the rising temperatures for the Portland area during May through August.

Ocean circulatory patterns may be having more of an impact on Portland's rising summer temperatures, than mounting carbon dioxide levels in the global atmosphere.

(posted by Elvis Clark on June 4, 2025)

It is interesting that even though this last month of March is three degrees warmer than the average of the last 30 years of Marchs, the climate for March in Portland has not changed at all for the last 30 years dating back to the mid-1990s.

March 2025 is the 5th warmest since the start of record keeping at the Portland Airport in 1940.

(The chart above shows the average temperature for each March in Portland dating back to 1950.)

(posted by Elvis Clark on April 4, 2025)

The chart above shows the average Portland temperatures recorded for each January since 1950 through this last month of January 2025.  Interesting that both the lowest and highest average January Temperatures occurred way back in the 1950s only three years apart.

Since the year 2000, Portland's January climate (rolling 30-year average) has increased by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit.  Is this such a bad thing.  I would say no.  In fact, it is just fine with me as I have been able to more easily tolerate working in the garden this last month, Jan '25.

I guess though it is good to have a good hard freeze to keep the population of nuisance bugs down come spring and summer.

(posted by Elvis Clark on February 5, 2025)

Aas part of a larger Portland Metro area schematic of heat sinks on a hot July day, the above schematic developed for Clackamas-County-at-large was recently prepared and published by Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas County scientists in conjunction with the three County Health officials.

County health officials tout planting more shade trees in the very hot spots (the redder tones shown above) around the Portland Metro area; and if there is excess road pavement, removing such pavement in the very hot spots.

I think too that instead of Oregon trying to change out its electric grid, which took some hundred years to build, in the matter of just 15 to 20 years from now, via Oregon's Net Zero laws; Adaptation is a lot less costly approach to surviving summer heat.  Adaption would include shade trees, helping low-income people with getting air conditioning equipment, and a pervasive network of cooling centers.

I plan to study the cost of Adaptation as against the cost of Net Zero Emission mandates.

Here's OPB's reporting on the recent Heat Map work of the three Portland area counties:

   New Portland heat map shows where to plant trees and remove pavement for a cooler city - OPB 

I think I will also see if I can get the heat map for just the City of Milwaukie by street from Clackamas' Health official, cited in the OPB report.

(posted by Elvis Clark on April 5, 2024)

Contained within Oregon House Bill law 2021, the Oregon Public Utilities Commission can let power companies to construct backup power plants run on fossil fuels, most probably natural gas power plants; in case the state's Net Zero plan to eliminate all fossil fuel generation in favor of all renewable power plants becomes excessively costly and/or unreliable.  This offramp to the state's Net Zero plan is contained within Section 9 of the House Bill law 2021.

(posted by Elvis Clark on December 8, 2023)