I knew that was a very rainy Saturday and a rainy windy stormy weekend but I didn’t know quite how rainy windy stormy it was. It broke records.
1.71 inches of rain Saturday, which is more than the normal amount for the whole month of September.
The center of the storm moved ashore the center of Vancouver Island (in British Columbia, Canada) early this morning* with a minimum pressure of 970 mb, deeper than any hurricane to form in the tropical Atlantic this hurricane season. On West Vancouver Island, a wind gust was clocked at 76 mph (122 km/h) Sunday night.
And there was even a tiny tornado 40 miles south of here.
*Yesterday
It was RIDICULOUS in my corner of the PNW. Rain so torrential and relentless that it was comical for those of us who had outdoor activities on the agenda. It was literally impossible to be outside for any length of time without getting soaked to the skin, regardless of umbrellas, or other dedicated rain-deflecting gear. I am still prune-y from all the race running and Sportball spectating I was obliged to do on Saturday and Sunday.
Here in southern New England we got almost to 80°F, today with nary a cloud in the sky.
Gotta love how there’s no decent drainage in Seattle because, while it rains a lot, it’s usually fairly light, steady rain. So the last few days turned our streets into rivers.
Ah, I miss Seattle.
PDX canceled the bike event scheduled for the weekend, because on top of the heavy rain (heavy for PDX), there was wind above 25 mph.
I was poking at weather and climate information pages yesterday, and yes this is unusual weather for the time of year, but the other thing going on is that the data sets are fairly short. A record for Seattle means “since 1945.” Other official weather record locations in the area don’t go back much further.
I just moved here from New York City, where the official records at Central Park start in the 1860s. After a while I noticed that there were a lot more “record report” statements from Bridgeport than any of the NYC sites, and from JFK than from Central Park or LaGuardia. Same thing: Bridgeport’s go back to 1972, and JFK’s I think to the 1950s. (I’m doing this from memory, since that bit of NOAA.gov seems to have been hit by the shutdown, though forecasting counts as an essential service.)
And our weather today is a full 7 Centigrade degrees above the normal high for this time of year. We have not had a “normal” fall since 1994.
PZ – I know; I actually enjoyed most of it. (Though a friend of mine posted an exciting picture on Facebook of her car next to a raging blaze of shrubs and branches, set off by power lines falling and sparking. But it was so wet that the fire went out right after she snapped the picture.)
And today it’s so beautiful it’s ridiculous – still windy and bright and gleaming.
Hmm. This part of Vancouver Island’s still rainy and drizzly.
Clouding up again now. But the early afternoon was drop-dead gorgeous.
I heard it called “the strongest september storm system ever recorded” for this area. We had sideways rain up here in Whatcom county, and I’m pretty certain I spotted a raccoon riding someone’s garbage can down the sidewalk at one point.
The internets are mad at you for not having a camera at hand. Very mad. That’s meme-worthy!
Ive been loving the storms. East Washington has really needed them since we had a pretty dry summer.
I was hoping for another month before the ground was saturated enough to start flooding my basement. 🙁