Des Moines, WA Weather Forecast
King County, Washington
Seven-day outlook
37–57°F across the weekThe week runs between 37° and 57°, with Wednesday the warmest day of it. There is no real trend across it: one day looks much like the next. Today is the wettest day, peaking near 37%. 5 of the 7 days stay dry.
Forecasts come from the National Weather Service's own computer models, and current conditions from the nearest reporting weather station. Both are served through the weather API. A forecast is guidance, not a warning, and anything the Weather Service has actually issued is on the live map.
The written summaries on this page are generated from the forecast data above, not by a meteorologist. Each sentence is a reading of the same numbers you can see, and no forecaster has reviewed them.
About the Des Moines forecast
Des Moines sits at 47.3887°N, 122.3176°W in King County, Washington. The forecast above is drawn for that point from the National Weather Service's own computer models: a seven-day outlook, and a finer-grained one covering the next eighteen hours where it reaches, and the radar and alert panels show what the Weather Service has out over the area right now.
- County
- King County
- Coordinates
- 47.3887°N, 122.3176°W
- Population
- 31,988 · 2023 estimate
- Land area
- 6.414 sq mi
Place data from the US Census Bureau. Coordinates are the Census internal point for Des Moines, and the forecast is for that location, not for every address inside the city limits, and a large city can have real weather differences from one side to the other.
How well can the network see Des Moines?
The nearest Doppler radar is KATX (Seattle/Tacoma, WA), 56 miles to the N. A WSR-88D's lowest routine scan sits half a degree above horizontal, and the earth curves away beneath it, so by the time that beam reaches Des Moines its center is about 4,200 ft above ground. That is far enough out that the beam has climbed above the lowest few thousand feet. Storm structure aloft is visible; a shallow circulation near the ground may not be, and a warning here can arrive before anything looks dramatic on the radar picture.
The closest instrument actually measuring the air is KSEA · Seattle-Tacoma Intl on the ASOS/AWOS network, 3.9 miles away. Close enough that its readings are, for practical purposes, the conditions in town.
Beam height is the standard 4/3-earth approximation for the 0.5° scan and assumes normal refraction; it is where the center of the beam is, not its edges, and unusual temperature profiles bend it. Radar siting from the NWS WSR-88D network, station positions from the Washington observing network as of this build.
Forecasts near Des Moines
- Normandy Park, WA3 mi
- SeaTac, WA4 mi
- Kent, WA5 mi
- Federal Way, WA5 mi
- Burien, WA6 mi
- Tukwila, WA6 mi
- Auburn, WA8 mi
- Algona, WA8 mi
Elsewhere in Washington
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