Story at a glance
- After experiencing extreme heat over the summer, Seattle has accumulated more inches of rain over the past few months than it traditionally does during fall.
- Seattle is known for its dreary weather but this fall close to 19 inches of rain fell in the city, the most it has seen since 1945.
- A number of downpours have contributed to record-setting amounts of rain hitting the city this fall.
Seattle has experienced tumultuous weather this year and after a summer of record-breaking heat, a deluge of rainfall has given the city it’s wettest fall since the 1940s.
The Seattle area accumulated roughly 19 inches of rain, the most the city has seen since records began in 1945, between September and November of this year, according to Matthew Cullen, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service forecast office in the city, The Guardian reported.
The fall’s deluge of rainfall surpassed a 2006 record for Seattle by less than an inch, according to The Guardian.
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The record-setting rainfall comes just a few months after the city suffered from record-breaking high temperatures. On June 28, three days into a sweltering heat wave consuming the Pacific Northwest, Seattle recorded its hottest day ever at a scorching 108 degrees, according to the University of Washington.
Shortly after the massive rainfall was reported, forecasters said residents should expect more rain in December. During the fall, the city’s famous drizzle was replaced with more heavy downpours caused in part by atmospheric rivers, or corridors of concentrated moisture in the atmosphere.
The rainfall caused by the atmospheric rivers has caused rivers and low lying areas to flood and at one point caused more than 170,000 people to lose power, according to The Washington Post.
Nick Bond, a Washington state climatologist, told The Guardian that “back-to-back” La Niña conditions could also be causing the uptick in rainfall and that climate change was “probably also a factor.”
“As the climate has warmed, then it means when everything comes together, and when conditions are right to produce precipitation, that it comes down that much harder,” Bond told The Guardian.
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