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Good afternoon and happy hot, hot Friday from the KUOW Newsroom. This is Seattle now. I'm Patricia Murphy with a roundup of today's top stories. It's August 22nd.

We'll get started with the obvious the heat. It is roasty. Most of Washington State is under a heat advisory through Tuesday morning and the hot dry stretch isn't helping boost rain totals, which in the Seattle area are six inches behind average.

Other areas of the state are behind by up to 20 inches.

Karen Bumbacho is the deputy state climatologist.

She says the lack of rain in the summer has become more common.

One thing that climate change models tell us is that we should expect to see drier summers in our future.

And that looks like it might already be happening in Washington State.

We have been seeing less of that late summer precipitation than usual in recent years.

The trend is particularly worrying for the Yakima Basin.

They're dealing with some of the lowest levels of water since 1971 when officials

started tracking it.

Mbako says even if the region gets a normal amount of rainfall, it won't be enough to make

up the water deficit in the basin from the last few years.

You'll need to take a shuttle bus if you're planning to ride the train through downtown Seattle

Saturday morning. Casey Martin reports. No trains will run from Westlake to Soto Saturday morning.

Sound Transit says it has to do some testing in the tunnel and move a guard station.

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