A Miracle Almost Happened

The rain returned.  And yes, it was more than a trace.  But JUST over a trace....the total so far is .01 inch....we came SO close to a miracle. 

Thus, our streak of 48 days of dry conditions at Sea-Tac have ended and we will not attain the magic 51 day record set in 1951.

 Here is the record at Sea-Tac (01 indicates the hundredth of an inch--time is in UTC or Greenwich Mean Time). Turns out the measurable rain occurred just before midnight.

To show you how close it came, here is the total precipitation as of 6 AM around the area for Seattle Rainwatch.  Zero precipitation (white) was so close...just across the Sound and even a few dry spots near the airport!

Here are the 24-h precipitation totals for the region ending 5AM:

 Some locations in the foothills got some decent rain out of this event.

This is like losing a high-scoring basketball or football game by only 1 point....really frustrating!  There is a significant chance this will be the only rain Sea-Tac gets out of the frontal passage.  There is more precipitation over the downtown and northern sections of the city, and northern Puget Sound, due to a Puget Sound convergence zone that is now going on. The lack of precipitation is due to rain shadowing in the lee of the Olympics...something the high-resolution models forecast quite well. Here is yesterday's high-resolution run from the UW (24h rainfall ending 5 AM)....the rainshadow is quite obvious, as is the convergence zone band extending over north Seattle and the heavy precipitation over the western slopes of the Cascades.

And finally, remember that the roads may be particularly slippery today where it does rain--oil and dust and water could prove a potent lubricant on the road.

 I expect Jim Forman of KING-5 to be out there spotlighting this road danger.  And perhaps Ron Judd of the Seattle Times.

A miracle almost happened