Hi Banana Joe,

Here in SE Olympia in the Chambers Prairie area, we have had exactly 6 more than you - 14.68.

Yeah, pretty darn soggy in most areas around here. Broke the record for November at SeaTac Airport with 11.63" as of Wednesday night and we are only just over half way through the month and another storm expected to hit tomorrow. Fortunately, they don't predict any additional flooding problems.......at least at the moment. I doubt we've seen the last of that this season.

I live on the edge of what is referred to as the convergence zone and generally get a good helping of whatever odd weather comes our way. Surprisingly, not that much rainfall (comparatively) has been measured at our local weather center, only about a half mile away - just 7.45"! Still considerably more than a "typical" November.

Dave, looks like you South Sound folks are getting the brunt of things.

10.07" in Vancouver, WA.......8.78 at Portland International
jwww

Got a crown? We crossed the 24" mark; (that's right, two feet) for November alone this past Wednesday evening. 20 odd miles east of Seattle in our own little convergence zone. The first two days of the Pineapple Express alone yielded 10 inches here. A considerable portion of those two days were spent troubleshooting our *@!@&*#@* drainage system, bailing out the garage and unearthing a broken outflow pipe that drains the land higher up on our sloped lot. Not high enough for the poor garage, apparently.

I have this to say: given enough water, there is no rainsuit that is impenetrable. I look forward to another arid summer.

Sandy black soil squeals for more
Still sobbing re:summer
SE Oly squalid broom place
Ahhhh...

Just SW of Port Orchard, 16" in 15 days. It was nice Thursday thru Saturday, but it's back again this morning; 0.6" Since midnight

I think with the 1/2 inch received yesterday, I am closing in on 12". We have been lucky with the recent storms and seem to have been in a bit of a wind/rain shadow and haven't suffered the wild weather that others have had. I am on Southern Vancouver Island. It is amazing the differences in our PNW.

Olympia has now broken the all time record for November there.

It is now officially the wettest month ever in the history of recording at Seattle-Tacoma Airport - 13.11 inches, edging out the previous record of 12.92" set in January, 1953. The only other record yet to beat (in Seattle, anyway) is the 15.33" recorded at the Old Federal Building, from December 1933. The Federal Building used to be the official recording station before it was moved to SeaTac.

But we still have 9 days left and it looks pretty wet for most of them - even that record may not hold up.

As of the morning of the 18th my westside Olympia rain gauge had 19.6" of rain.

As of this morning, the 22nd, I have 22.9". And it's still raining. Making up for the summer.

Of course this is just a little backyard storebought rain gauge, I'm sure not optimally placed or totally accurate, but still !!! nearly 2 feet of rain in 22 days! 4.8" just on Monday the 6th, immediatelly following two days of 2" and 3" each. And still the soil was dry 4" down after all that.

Olympia gets nearly twice as much rain, officially on average, than the official average for Seattle, and more rain than any WA city listed in my Gardening in Washington book, although that does not include coastal places like Aberdeen or Forks.

Anyone from Forks? How much rain out there?

They can't answer until they get their heads above water.

I was in Grayland for the first Pineapple express, and got out right before the second. In one night we had thundershowers all night that left 6" of standing water on the ground. All the soil there is sand. My sister lives in Hoquium (near Aberdeen) and said that her 80 year old gardener neighbor had never seen it rain this much. - Paul

The Olympia airport is slightly rainshadowed by the hills containing Capitol Forest. It receives an annual average of 51" of rain. Olympia proper receives a little bit more: a weather station at Preist Point Park averaged 54" before it was taken out of service. As you go west from Olympia, precipitation goes up pretty quick. Living on Cooper Point I consistently recorded 15-20% more precipitation than the Olympia airport. A lady in Alpine Hills has kept records for years; she averages 75" (benefitting quite a bit from higher elevation and orographic lifting over Capitol Forest). So Reg your 22.9" is quite probable.

Weather data for many locations in the Pacific Northwest is available through the Western Regional Climate Center: Washington Climate Summaries. This is a very useful site.

Location... average annual precip... wettest month ever...
Sea-Tac... 38.09... 12.92 (Jan 1953, but this record has now been broken)
Olympia Airport... 50.88... 19.84 (Jan 1953)
Shelton... 66.19... 23.86 (Jan 1953)
Potlatch... 89.54... 32.01 (Jan 2006)
Forks... 118.83... 41.70 (Jan 1953)
Quinalt Ranger Station... 137.21... 50.39 (Jan 1935) (the wettest place I could find)
Sequim 2E... 15.84... 4.78 (Nov 1990)
Sequim... 16.51... 8.79 (Dec 1933)

Was that Quinault record 1935 or supposed to be 1953 like the others?

We even made the New York Times!

Here is a link that might be useful: New York Times article about our rainy November

1935. Same month/year as the pre-Sea-Tac record from downtown Seattle.... which we have yet to break. Will we break it? Ooh, the suspense........

Now, how do you add snowfall to the total rainfall to keep a moisture record? My raingauge is on a fencepost and the other day when it was just above freezing, the snow wicked the moisture out of the snow and the raingauge filled up -- I know we didn't get 7 inches of moisture! I'll just have to guess for these last few days.

Good question Dotty! On Sunday morning I had 0.5" of rain in the gauge but another 0.5" of snow capping it. Should I brush the snow into the gauge and add its displacement, or what??

today's snow has very little moisture in it so I'm not going to count it.

I recently heard 10 inches of snow is equal to 1 inch of water.

I checked the microfiche files for the Olympia paper yesterday and the December 1933 total was 27.12 inches. Thanks to that month the year finished above 6 feet of rainfall and just 0.61 inches shy of the "all-Time" of 73.44 set in 1878.

All the stations were in the downtown area until the move to the 'drier' airport in 1948. A Port of Olympia weather station that less than a mile from the Priest Point Park 1933 location recorded 21.30" last month; more than 20% less than December 1933.

In case you didn't see the Sea Times story last week, the month was wet for another reason. Prohibition expired on December 5-6th.

Well that's interesting. Is way-back-historical data like that available publicly?

Ever notice how, no matter how extreme we think our weather is becoming - heat, cold, rain, whatever - the old records from the 19th and early 20th century NEVER seem to fall?

An inch of rain can equal anywhere from 5 to 30 inches of snow depending on how wet the snow is. The only way to measure it as rain (which you should do, if you want to have accurate precipitation records) is to melt it down.