Soggy Seattle Trying to Weather a Stormy June

Ever wonder what happens to the rain during a prolonged drought like California’s? People in Seattle believe they have an answer: It all comes here and falls on them.

Almost every day. Drip, trickle, splash.

Oh sure, by reputation this is the land of the wet sky. Of liquid sunshine. No-growth leaders delight in every damp gray sunrise, in every watery gray afternoon. This is the kind of moist misery sure to scare off the hordes of out-of-state migrants seeking new life here in paradise.

Then again, enough is enough.

Even longtime residents are crying uncle. As June rainfall heads for a soggy record, snapdragons are oozing orange rust, roses are breaking out with spotted rot, tempers are sodden.

They even have a name for the dank mood: SAD, seasonal affective disorder. Treatment calls for sitting in front of intense lights for several hours each day

“I’ve got fungus on my roses and mold between my toes,” complained Joe Quintana, special assistant to the King County executive. “Personally, I’m ready to trade the entire Columbia River to California for just one day of sunshine.”

The sun popped out Wednesday afternoon and sent pale and wrinkled Seattle residents running into the streets and holding some hope of a break. The last clear day here was May 9.

“Is Seattle having fun?” the Post-Intelligencer newspaper asked in a Page 1 headline this week.

So far, rainfall for the first two weeks of June has been 2.99 inches. That’s more than double the 1.38 inches normal for the whole month. And it’s nearing the record set 44 years ago of 3.9 inches for June. Since January, Seattle has sloshed under 23.22 inches of rain. Los Angeles recorded only 7.3 inches in the whole of the last year.

Bob Herzog of the National Weather Service in Seattle said that June rainfall is disruptive even under ideal circumstances. “This is the time of year when people look at the calendar. They see the rest of the country basking in the sunshine. They’ve seen the sun in May. Now they’re ready for summer. But they’re in the Pacific Northwest,” he said.

By some accounts, Seattle ranks as one of America’s most livable cities. But people here say they are ready to be polled again. Mold allergies are up, and so are the business at travel agencies and the waiting lines at tanning salons. Owners of pick-your-own strawberry fields, who once forecast a banner season, worry that they could lose half their crop.

“I’ve never seen so many people frown at one place in my life,” said University of Washington office worker Rachel Norris.

Washington is emerging from a long period of sub-normal rainfall, which included a real drought in the 1980s. Officials said that for the first time in 12 years, all major reservoirs in the Yakima Irrigation Project are full at the same time. Snowpack in the Cascades is 139% higher than usual. But even with all the precipitation, ground water levels are still below normal.

“We’re hoping we’ve finally turned the corner,”’ said forecaster Herzog.

And it’s about time, agree the state’s farmers. There are no pictures of parched fields here. Instead, farmers are seen pumping water out of ponds and digging drainage ditches through the mud.

It’s enough to make Wendy Karpiel, a commercial sales manager in downtown Seattle, homesick for sunny Mission Viejo. She has had the top down on her roadster for only two weeks in the last year. “It’s always this way. It’s sunny when people come to visit. Then they move up. And it rains until they leave.”