A gloomy Seattle on June 13, 2021. (Q13 FOX Photo)
SEATTLE - June is supposed to be one of those "other" months when people joke about it raining 9 months of the year in Seattle.
Hmmm…maybe it's 10 months this year.
After a very dry start to spring, it's ending with a flourish of rainfall, with Sunday's soaker coming up among the wetter June days the city has recorded.
NOAA GOES-17 Satellite image taken on June 13, 2021.
Sea-Tac Airport recorded 0.81 inches of rain, which made it the wettest June 13th on record, easily topping the previous record of 0.50 inches set in 1946.
If we check the entire month, it was the second-wettest June date in the past 20 years, only topped by the 1.05 inches that fell on June 15, 2017. And if we go back all way the way to the start of records, it ranked 15th-wettest June day.
And Sea-Tac didn't even take the brunt of it. Olympia just missed an inch (0.96 inches) while many areas in southwestern Washington had no problem busting past the inch mark.
For the month, Seattle sits at 1.87 inches, which is already ahead of the entire monthly normal of 1.45 inches and puts us at 20th wettest June out of 77 years at Sea-Tac. We could inch up that list a little more with showers in the forecast Monday and Tuesday before it looks like we dry out for the rest of the month (spoiler alert!).
It was gloomy, but it's been gloomier?!?
Aside from the rain, the thick clouds took the "June Gloom" to an advanced level Sunday.
Seattle received about 25% of the typical sun energy for a long, sunny June day, according to Meteorologist Mark Albright. Though surprisingly there have been even gloomier June days in recent years with June 27, 2020, June 30, 2018 and June 18, 2017 receiving even less sunlight.
Gloom about to become zoom as temperatures set to warm up later in the month
For those who cherish the long sunny days of the summer solstice, your time appears to be coming. Skies are expected to clear later this week with temperatures warming into the 70s. And don't look now, but some of the far extended forecasts suggest a sunny and warm-to-hot pattern perhaps in the offing as we get toward the end of June.
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