Posted on 08/31/2012 2:41:20 AM PDT by djf
Provided there is no rain recorded at Sea-Tac airport by midnight tonight, Aug 31st, Seattle will break a longstanding weather record.
The very first-ever totally rainless August in the history of the weather records.
We are also on something like day 40 of days without any measurable precipitation, which is about the 6th longest stretch on the list. The record of rainless days in Seattle goes back to 1951, when a 51 day stretch of no rain was recorded.
Now Seattle certainly has a reputation for alot of rain. A well deserved reputation, even though there are plenty of places in the country that get more, oftentimes in Seattle it will rain for weeks or more, not accumulate that much on the actual gauges, but just be cool and damp and sunless for literally weeks.
Years ago there was a show on PBS about life on the Olympic peninsula. It was surprising because it highlighted how life there has basically two modes: temperate rain forest mode and high desert mode.
Anyways, summer is winding down. I will, for the next few weeks, enjoy walking around outside in my garden without shoes, and not freezing my backside off!
And what was the suicide rate in August?
Probably the lowest it’s ever been...
I spent lots of time in the field in Washington, and that was when we had those threadbare old feather sleeping bags, and all cotton clothes, and those shelter halves with floors or ends, that did nothing, so you were wet the entire time, slept literally in the mud and water, and froze daytime and night because nothing could dry.
Everything got wet the first day, and stayed wet the entire exercise.
I grew up on the east coast in upstate NY where it can get COLD!!
But often, during the winter, the sun can come out, it can be twenty degrees or so, with snow on the ground... you can go out and do heavy physical labor and take it down to a tee shirt and still be ok! Even work up a sweat!
But here, when it gets down to 45 degrees, and 97 percent humidity for days and weeks on end, it just goes to the bone... you can’t get warm, and everything - EVERYTHING -is damp and chilly.
For us in coastal NW Florida this has been the coolest August in 15 years or so and the wettest summer in a lot longer than that. In the 60s and before his was the second wettest spot in the 48 states, second only to coastal Washington.It has been relatively dry since then.
I spent a wet cold fall in Tacoma in 1970. Lows were in the 40s-50s and it was COLD.
I spent six months in Redmond once. I’ll never forget I had to turn the heat on in my apartment on the 4th of July.
I don’t know how you guys do it!
I have a brother who lives in Olympia. He and his wife have a very nice home...and no air-conditioning. They live in a part of the country that gets neither very hot in the summer nor very cold in the winter.
So far, two days this year when people were complaining, both days it got up to mid-upper 90’s outside my house.
I just open my windows all at night and then close them in the morning. Because of that, and the way my house is situated surrounded by trees, the warmest it got inside was about 87, which for me is very tolerable.
I spent about 5 years in Seattle. I thought it never rained in the summer - or at least that’s how it felt. It was always very sunny and bright. It was too bright for me; I welcomed the dreary fall weather and cloudiness. A girl can only take so much sun!
When I was looking for apartments from out of state, I kept trying to find one with air conditioning and couldn’t. Once I was there, you realize you don’t need air conditioning since it doesn’t get humid like I was used to on the east coast. It does get hot for a few days or a week, and it would be nice to have air conditioning some times, but you can do without it. What freaked me out, though, was that many public places don’t have air either, so there’s no respite.
For those interested, Seattle did break the record, first ever totally dry August. 41 days so far without rain, the all time record dry spell is 51 days, from what I see out in the Pacific satellite pictures, I’m kinda doubting that we will go another ten days dry, but who knows!
If you have never visited here, and think someday you would like to, I can only urge you to do it in the August-September timeframe. It truly is beautiful, with Puget Sound, the Cascade mountains, Mt. Rainier.
But if you come in January, you won’t see much if any of that!
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