7/25/2023 0 Comments Did itrain in washington state![]() The report says that both the Northeast and Southeast are vulnerable to an increase in precipitation rate and events. That’s more than in an entire typical year. Take Wilmington, for example: over the course of just 17 days this year, it saw a total 58.96 inches of rain. “The amount of rain falling on the heaviest rain days has also increased over the past few decades.” “Across most of the United States, the heaviest rainfall events have become heavier and more frequent,” the US government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment states. While it isn’t totally clear how much of this year’s copious rain is due to climate change, it is clear extreme precipitation like this is a sign of a warming planet. Record wettest calendar year on record set in Washington /S9e4vyeJ24- NWS Baltimore-Washington December 15, 2018 Numerous daily rainfall records have also been broken throughout the year. In addition to having its rainiest year on record, Washington is also seeing its wettest November and its second wettest Autumn. But rainfall in the city is still setting a significant record. Washington won’t reach 100 inches of rain like Wilmington has this year. Much of it is also due to the record-breaking 23.02 inch rainfall Wilmington received over a three day period during Hurricane Florence.Ĭlimate change is making storms like Hurricane Florence worse What can I say? I'm a pluviophile.The state of North Carolina has had above-average rainfall in 2018 due to a steady stream of non-tropical low-pressure systems, cold and warm fronts, and daytime thunderstorms, according to the National Weather Service in Wilmington. Yes, Seattle is a dreary place - but I like it that way. By this metric, Seattle and Buffalo are tied for #1, while Portland and Pittsburgh are tied for #2. Climatologist Brian Brettschneider also made what he called the " Dreariness Index," which factors in total precipitation, the number of wet days, and cloudiness. But Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh? Really?Īpparently, those cities are just about as dreary as Seattle. It's Seattle's "little brother" down the road, and the weather there is very similar to ours. Believe it or not, there are cities with even more rainy (or snowy) days: Buffalo, Portland, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. Yet, Seattle only comes in at #5 by this ranking. So, Seattle's reputation is totally deserved because of the number of days in which it rains. (The dry season is the summer, which lasts from roughly July to early October.) It rarely rains hard instead, it has a (seemingly) never-ending drizzle that keeps the city wet almost all-year round. ![]() How is it possible that Seattle has such a rainy reputation if it's not even remotely one of the wettest cities in the country? Well, the rain in Seattle is sort of like the mist in the grocery produce aisle. Notice that most of the cities with more rainfall are located east of the Mississippi River, as shown in the map below made by climatologist Brian Brettschneider. The first chart below depicts the wettest cities ranked by total precipitation:Īt 37.7 inches of precipitation annually, Seattle ranks 32nd among the nation's 50 largest cities. To perform this analysis, I combined data from two sources: (1) Wikipedia's page on the 383 metropolitan statistical areas in the United States and (2) a website called Current Results that features aggregated weather data. In fact, Seattle doesn't even rank in the top 30 for precipitation among the nation's 50 largest cities. Given Seattle's rainy reputation, it must be one of the wettest cities in America, right? Wrong. ![]() (I bought two of them and thought they were pretty cool until the water turned yellow.) ![]() How much does it rain in Seattle? It rains enough that a company (based in Seattle, of course) developed a product called a RainGlobe, which is like a snow globe, except it rains inside. ![]()
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