My Comments: We've broken two monthly rainfall records for November with wild weather of high winds, snow, freezing rain, flooding, record lows, one day rainfall record, thunderstorms and even thundersnow. Pretty much the wildest month that many people of this generation will never forget and it will be a permanent mark. I will also never forget that month, too. It's extreme!
Seattle breaks rainfall record with -- what else? -- snow and freezing rain
Related Content
Story Published: Nov 28, 2006 at 2:36 PM PST
Story Updated: Nov 30, 2006 at 9:25 AM PST
By Associated Press
SEATTLE (AP) - This time it was no big deal, snow changing to rain, a new mark in the record books and little hassle for anyone as a winter storm gave way to the old familiar drip, drip, drip across Western Washington.
Hours after temperatures dropped to record lows across the state, sleet and snow began falling Wednesday evening after the end of the rush hour - a marked contrast to the swirling white gusts that brought icy gridlock to streets and highways from shortly before nightfall Monday to early Tuesday morning.
Taking no chances, many state Transportation Department crews were sent to work 12-hour shifts Wednesday laying down sand and deicer before the arrival of the region's principal snow removal system - rain.
"I think it's safe to say that for once the rain will be a welcome change," Seattle police Officer Jeffery R. Kappel told The Seattle Times.
An Airlift Northwest medical evacuation helicopter pilot made an unplanned landing at Myrtle Edwards Park along the Seattle waterfront because of freezing rain and some streets were closed for a time Wednesday night, but rising temperatures assured that slush and ice would not long be a problem. No one else was aboard the chopper.
Across the region the mercury rose from the 20s and upper teens at daybreak Wednesday to around the freezing point by 6 p.m. and over freezing early Thursday. As of 2 a.m. light rain was falling over most of the state west of the Cascade range and temperatures were ranged from the mid-30s inland to the 40s by the coast.
By 9:30 p.m. precipitation had broken the one-month record for Seattle, 15.33 inches set in December 1933, when the official reporting station was at the old downtown Federal Building.
By about 10 p.m., the November precipitation total at the current station, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, stood at 15.45 inches, National Weather Service meteorologist Doug McDonnal said. The rain total climbed to 15.63 inches by early Thursday morning.
Earlier, the weather service reported a record low of 18 degrees at the airport, breaking the old mark for Nov. 29 of 22 degrees set in 1985.
Other record lows included 12 degrees at Bellingham, near the Canadian border; 25 degrees in Hoquiam near the coast, and 2 degrees below zero at Pullman in the southeast corner of the state.
The worst remaining trouble spot was the northwest corner of the state, where three to six inches of snow was expected before the precipitation stopped or changed to rain.
Schools were closed Thursday for a third straight day in Bellingham and elsewhere in Whatcom County but were reopening in most other areas after snow holidays for hundreds of thousands of students. In Seattle and many other schools, classes were starting two hours late.
"They're driving me crazy," Joanie Griffin, whose three teenage sons attend schools in the Central Kitsap School District near Bremerton, told The Times. "They're complaining about how bored they are. ... They need to go back to school."
With warmer temperatures expected to follow the storm, the Weather Service also issued a flood watch for the combined effects of rain and melting snow in Whatcom County, just south of the Canadian border.
The previous storm was linked to two deaths - Mike Harding and Steven A. Gallauher, both 16, whose bodies were found Tuesday in a garage east of Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula.
They apparently succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to refuel a portable generator that was being used to provide electricity for an adjacent house during a storm-caused blackout, Clallam County officials said.
