It's raining in the Pacific Northwest! I can just imagine many of you rolling your eyes and thinking "Really? What a surprise!"
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Actually, the 2014 water year (which ran from the beginning of October 2013 to the end of Sept 2014) was quite dry compared to the 30 year average precipitation in this area - the NE corner of the Olympic Peninsula. October 2014 has been quite wet, so we are catching up. Follow me below the orange graph lines for more.
Here are the data from our CoCoRaHS station for the last water year. As you can see, we ended the year way below the 30-year average for our area.
Rainfall in my backyard
But then the rains began! For the month of October (2014), we've had almost 3 inches. This is considerably more than we've measured since we started tracking precipitation here in 2011 (more than 2x the previous maximum value) and above the 30-year average for the end of October, based on this graph. So, it has been relatively wet.
And yet...consider the raw numbers in that graph. Can someplace with only around 20 inches per year deserve the reputation of the rainy Pacific Northwest? Well, I live in the rainshadow of the Olympic Mountains. Blow up the lightboxed map below and see how this plays out - compare the 18" at Port Townsend (light yellow) to the 200" in the heart of the Olympic National Park (red-purple)! Remember that much of the precipitation in the mountains falls as snow!
Rain shadow effects
So that's the weather report from here. So now it's your turn. What's up in your area?
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