Let me further illustrate by starting with the storm-total rainfall at of 9 PM Tuesday from the coastal (Langley Hill) and the Camano Island radar. First, consider the Camano Island radar (remember it does a poor job over the Olympics). You will notice the central and northern Cascades are getting hammered with peak values of roughly 5 inches. In contrast, nearly nothing fell from Seattle across the Kitsap, with heavier values towards the north Olympics and Strait (5 inches plus).
The Langley Hill radar (see below) shows at least 5 inches on the western side of the Olympics and a substantial decline over the ocean.
We can also look at the rainfall measured at the ground. Here are the values for the 24-h period ending 9 PM Tuesday. In central Puget Sound many locations had only .01-.04 inches--barely enough to wet the concrete. And yes, those dessicated folks in Sequim had only .01 inches. In contrast, lots of locations on the western and southwestern side of the Olympics and in the north Cascades had 3-4 inches. Extraordinarily short distances (say from Bothel, just north of Seattle, to the nearby foothills (roughly 20 miles to the east) brought a change from a few hundredths to well over three inches. Amazing. This is why one has to love Northwest weather...the contrasts are extreme.
Just as amazing is that our numerical models had a pretty good handle on the situation. Here is the 24-h precipitation prediction starting 4 PM yesterday (a close match-up in time for the plot above). Not perfect, but it realistically predicted the rainshadow and heavier precipitation in the Olympics, mountains of Vancouver Island, and the central/north Cascades.
Based on this forecast, I biked to work on Tuesday. Piece of cake.
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