Soggy Seattle lives up to name, breaks another rain record
SEATTLE (AP) - Soggy Seattle has broken another rainfall record.
The city measured 44.7 inches (114 centimeters) of rain between October and April, making it the wettest such period since records began in 1895, the National Weather Service in Seattle said.
It marks the second year in the row that the city has topped the historic rainfall record for that period.
With several days left to go this month, this year's record will likely be padded some more, said Mike McFarland, a meteorologist with the service in Seattle.
"This has been a terrible winter. It was just wet. There's no way around that," he said Tuesday.
The previous record was 44.5 inches (113 centimeters) of rain for the October 2015 to April 2016 period. The normal amount of rain during that period is usually 30.9 inches (79 centimeters).
In the Pacific Northwest, cold-weather systems move through the region with dry breaks in between but McFarland said "we're missing those breaks."
The winter storm season was notable for back to back weather systems that were slightly wetter and warmer than normal, McFarland said.
Seattle also set a record number for wet days from October through April.
They are classified as days with at least .01 inches (0.3 centimeters) of precipitation. The city had 144 wet days from October through April and only five dry days so far this month.
Some parts of Washington state have had it much worse than Seattle
Quillayute Airport near the town of Forks along the state's northwestern Pacific coast has had more than 116 inches (294.6 centimeters) of rain since Oct. 1.
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This story corrects that that 116 inches of rainfall was measured at Quillayute Airport, not in Quillayute, which is not a town.