Blog Article

Nice Weather Outlook: The Best Air Keeps Moving This Week

The nicest weather in the US shifts daily this week, from the Pacific Northwest to Vermont to Northern California. A day-by-day guide to where to be.

This Week's Nicest Air Keeps Changing Addresses

Most weeks, the "best weather in America" sticks to one region and just sits there. Not this week. Track our Nice Weather outlook page day by day and you'll watch the top tier hopscotch clean across the map: Pacific Northwest today, northern New England tomorrow, a split between Northern California and Maine on Saturday, then a slow drift toward the Great Lakes before it boomerangs back to the Southern California coast by Wednesday. If you've got flexible plans this week, this is the itinerary.

That's not the whole national story, to be clear. WPC has dangerous heat locked in across the Central and Southern Plains and Southeast through mid-August, with heat indices running 105 to 115 degrees and little overnight relief. The Midwest and Ohio Valley are still wringing out from this week's flash flooding. The nice pockets below are real, but they're pockets, surrounded by a country that's mostly hot, humid, or soggy right now.

Today: Western Oregon and Southwest Washington Take the Ceiling

Today's best air sits in the lowlands of western Oregon and southwest Washington, where light wind, low humidity, and clean skies add up to a genuine Beautiful-tier day. Portland, Salem, Eugene, and Grants Pass are all sitting between 80 and 92 on our 100-point scale, with highs in the mid-70s to upper 80s and dewpoints in the mid-50s. Skies are running 5 to 8% cloud cover, so this is sunny-and-dry, not overcast-and-mild.

Here's the interesting part: today's ceiling is technically Perfect, but nothing actually clears it. Every underlying sub-score in western Oregon is strong enough, but a UV index of 7.1 and an AQI of 37 both trip the stricter gates Perfect requires. It's a case of an excellent day getting held to Beautiful by two numbers that are still perfectly reasonable, just not quite clean enough. Wear sunscreen and don't be surprised the score doesn't say "Perfect" even though the sky looks it.

Meanwhile, if you're at Gillette Stadium tonight for Colts-Patriots preseason, or at Acrisure Stadium for Packers-Steelers, you're in Fair territory: warm, a little smoky aloft, and nowhere close to what Vermont is about to get one state over.

Tomorrow: The Best Air in the Country Moves to Vermont

Friday flips the map. Central Vermont, northern New York, and New Hampshire post the day's best score, 89.5, as dry Canadian high pressure settles in. Burlington, Rutland, Barre, and Lebanon are looking at highs near 71, lows near 56, dewpoints around 55, and an AQI of just 34. That's about as clean as this outlook gets anywhere in the country tomorrow.

It misses Perfect by a nose, and not for the reason you'd guess. Every sub-score clears the bar except temperature (90.6) and sky (91.6), both just a shade under the 92 threshold. Air quality and UV are both comfortably fine. It's simply a degree or two cool and a touch more cloud cover than Perfect demands. Good problem to have.

Portland (Oregon), Seattle, Boston, and Los Angeles land one tier down at Nice, and the thing holding that broader zone back is air quality again, an AQI of 58, just above the Beautiful-tier cap even though every other number there would qualify.

Saturday: Northern California and Northern New England Share the Crown

Saturday's ceiling is capped at Beautiful by policy this far out, and two very different corners of the country get there. Sacramento, Stockton, Oakland, and Fremont post scores in the 82 to 92 range as a cooldown and drying trend move through the Central Valley, with highs near 79, dewpoints in the low 50s, and an AQI around 36, the cleanest air-quality reading of the outlook. At the same time, Manchester, NH, Portland, ME, and Bangor, ME hit the same tier under the same setup: light wind, dry air, mostly clear skies.

Seattle and San Jose sit a notch down at Nice, kept out of Beautiful purely by lingering wildfire haze, AQI 90 and 73 respectively. If you're headed to the Chicago Air and Water Show that day, know that Chicago falls under SPC's Marginal severe risk zone for Saturday, not the dangerous kind of day, but pack a plan B for pop-up storms rather than assuming clear skies all afternoon.

Worth a footnote here: several Sacramento Valley and East Bay cities, including Sacramento, Oakland, Walnut Grove, and Shasta, are now on a 66-day streak of Nice-or-better weather with no end in sight. That streak just keeps padding itself day after day.

Days 4 Through 7: The Ceiling Drops to Nice, Then California Gets It Back

Past Saturday, confidence naturally thins out, and the outlook's own discussion is upfront that the best available tier caps at Nice for most of this stretch. The best zone drifts from the High Plains and Intermountain West (Fargo, San Francisco) on Sunday and Monday, into the Great Lakes and Northeast by Tuesday, before swinging back to the California coast by next Wednesday.

Tuesday, August 18 is worth flagging on its own: our data shows a narrow Beautiful-tier pocket touching Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Eugene, and East Millinocket, ME, even though that day's own written discussion frames Nice as the more solid, defensible ceiling. Read that one as "possible upside" rather than a lock, given it's five days out.

By next Wednesday, August 19, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, and San Luis Obispo look Beautiful on paper, sunny, dry, only 8% cloud cover. But look closer at the heat-stress sub-score for that zone: it's down to 52 out of 100, and a third of the zone's gridpoints are flagged for heat stress. Highs pushing 90 with building humidity mean this reads more like "gorgeous but genuinely warm" than the crisp Beautiful days earlier in the week. Worth knowing if you're planning a full day outdoors that far south.

The Quiet Champion of the Week

While the tier map bounces around, one stretch of California has stayed remarkably steady underneath it all. Weldon, Lake Isabella, Wofford Heights, Kernville, and the rest of the Kern River Valley are averaging 81-plus out of 100 across all seven forecast days, with every single day landing at Nice or better. Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Carpinteria along the coast are right behind them, also seven-for-seven. Nobody's throwing a parade for the Kern River Valley, but if you want the single most dependable stretch of outdoor weather in the country this week, that's it.

The Short Version

Today: western Oregon and southwest Washington. Tomorrow: Vermont and northern New England. Saturday: Northern California and Maine both get a turn. After that, treat the outlook as a general direction rather than a lock, and if you're in the Southern Plains or Southeast this week regardless of what any of this says, the heat is the story that actually matters for you.

https://ryanhallyall.com/blog/nice-weather-2026-08-13-this-weeks-nicest-air-keeps-changing-addresses