Was cooking up a post about today’s crappy rain and tried to hop over to KING 5’s Schoolnet Weather report for Stevens Elementary — and found, sadly, it’s no longer available. Boo.
Anyhow, Stevens’ replacement — the Husky Stadium station — says we got about .57 inches of rain today. If that’s accurate, it’s basically more rain in a single day than we typically get in the entire month of August (as measured a few miles south down at the airport). The table below is from a post I wrote last summer — 2 reasons why this summer feels extra crappy. Ignore the August 2007 data in the table because I was writing mid-month — we ended up at .73 inches in 2007, btw. But even without that, you can see that our Augusts are typically relatively dry.
So far in 2008, we’re already over an inch of rain and people are bitching because it certainly feels like summer is over. If you want to sound like an old-timer, tell them this ain’t nothing compared to 2004.
I have lived in Seattle my entire life. We always get 1-2 significant rains a year in August, but they last only a day or so, and in between the weather is beautiful. So, for all of you who are complaining, give it a rest! (or move elsewhere).
looking at the august data up there, it seems like seattle gets a wet august (over 1 inch of rain in the month) once every 3 or 4 years. we probably should have gotten one last year but as was pointed out just .73 inches (this is what some would call “a pattern”); so we were due for this rain.
wrong! we received no significant rain in Aug 2006, for example. the data do not lie!
i stated that it looked like seattle got a wet august “once every 3 or 4 years”. 2006 would have been considered 2 years since the heavy august rains in 2004, so it shouldn’t have been wet, too soon in the pattern. we could have gotten a rainy august in 2007 but we didn’t. hence, 2008 is making up for it; 4 years after the last wet august.
based on the above data august could be viewed as 1 rainy, 3 off, 1 rainy, 2 off, 1 rainy, 3 off and, with this year’s data projected at over 1″, 1 rainy (i wonder if we’ll see dry augusts for ’09 and ’10?).
you are right the data do not lie. if you read it properly. :)
i was responding to Calhoun who said we always get significant rain in August, not you zeebleoop. Mis-clicked.
Records at Sea-tac airport (1948-present) show that Seattle receives 1″ or more of rain in August about 40% of the time. The 50% level is about 0.75″ of rain in August, so most of the time Seattle does not get more than 0.75″ of rain in August. The amount we have gotten so far (2.86″) happens less than once out of every 10 years.
(Details at http://weathervortex.blogspot.com/)