Jake Ellison

We’ve got one more weekend of great hot weather before we begin to see temperatures more normal for September, says Cliff Mass, KPLU’s weather commentator and University of Washington Professor of Atmospheric Sciences.

Look for temperatures to be in the lower 80s today with another five to seven degrees higher on Saturday. Sunday will peak at nearly 90. If these temperatures hold out through Monday, we could set a record for number of days in September that have reached or exceeded 80. The record is eight days.

There are likely hundreds of dead human bodies in the waters of the Northwest at any given time.

Time for another movie about a killer virus that spreads across the planet: "Contagion" by Steven Soderbergh is due out in a few days. Can these movies teach us anything?

Humanosphere’s Tom Paulson writes about the movie and his science-writing colleague, “one of the top public health and pandemic journalists out there," who was a consultant for it.

“Despite her misgivings, Garrett agreed to work as a consultant to the filmmakers for 'Contagion.' She says it is definitely based on an extraordinarily virulent bug that spreads fast. But the science is solid, she says, and there are some valuable lessons contained in the drama.”

Read more on Humanosphere.

What to do this weekend … well if you are anywhere near Seattle, it’ll be tough to stay out of earshot of Bumbershoot.

But, let’s say you want to hear jazz at the mega-music-arts fest. Is there any there? Yes, but only on Sunday.

Expect these morning clouds to clear out and to have a sweltering long weekend (for the Northwest this summer anyway) – and through the next week as well.

Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington and KPLU’s new weather commentator, says "It's going to be great."

Oh and with all the talk of hurricanes on the East Coast, what about West Coast hurricanes? We get 'em.

Sockeye salmon returning to Canada this year will be tested by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) for radiation contamination that might be picked up in the North Pacific from Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster.

However, Washington state officials have no plans to test salmon specifically for radiation related to the Japanese disaster because earlier environmental testing showed so few signs of radiation that current levels in fish, if any, would be "undetectable," a spokesperson for the Department of Health said.

The latest polling of Washington voters shows that optimism has taken “nose dive” to an all-time low.

Voters surveyed in The Elway Poll – an independent, nonpartisan analysis of public opinion – were less likely to think things were “getting better” than at any time since the survey began in 1991.

The architect of the survey, Stuart Elway, said people may be openly entertaining the idea that America has entered a “malaise” or “a new normal” of long-term high unemployment, weak spending and, simply, a plain old bummer of an economy like the one Japan suffered for more than a decade.

At the news of Steve Job's departure from Apple's top job, Mark Anderson – KPLU's "The Digital Future" commentator and CEO of Strategic News Service, the first subscription-based newsletter on the Internet – told his subscribers to sell sell sell.

 The 20th Seattle Hempfest opened at noon Friday in a park on the Seattle waterfront.

(Photo gallery from Friday afternoon inside.)

Geek out but don't freak out.

From a full day of tech-related street-fair exhibits and speakers in Seattle to a celebration of one of the most ancient musical instruments at a state park near Des Moines, you can experience the full range of human cultural endeavors this weekend.

A new law giving distillers the opportunity to set up tastings in state-run liquor stores goes into effect Sept. 1 and runs for a year.

The “spirits tasting pilot” was established by the Washington Legislature in response to a request from the Distillery Representative Association of Washington (DRAW).

A panel discussion in Seattle this week hosted by Barokas Public Relations and GeekWire sparked a lively debate around the intersection of two questions:  Why are Facebook, Google, HP, Zynga and Salesforce.com building big shops in Seattle? And, Is Microsoft vulnerable to engineer-poaching because of its culture?

On Tuesday when we started the conversation on our Facebook page about the real impact of the bad economy, the DOW was back on the mend and the fallout from S&P downgrades seemed to be moderate. In that calm before the storm, however, we still felt that the blows to the economy are adding up and causing real people real headaches.

Boy is it, and according to one expert the kind of economic recession we have had will take years to pull out of.

We are working on a story about the REAL impact of the ongoing economic woes. We want to know, what one thing has been affected most in your life by the turbulent economy?

Come to our Facebook page to join the conversation and tell us your story. Here’s a few of the responses so far:

Soon after downgrading the credit rating of the United States, Standard & Poor’s has taken the city of Tacoma’s rating down a notch from AAA to AA+ on debt it has issued that is backed by the federal government, according to a report in the Puget Sound Business Journal.