OT Are you in the new "rain belt"

[nheng]

Poured all night again and is pouring now. Seems like we've had rain (NH) for about 9 out of 10 days this summer. For those who hate house painting, its been an ideal season

[lakeside53]

I'm in the old belt - Seattle area. We've had little rain since May 10th... at my house it's rained lightly three times and each was at night... and last night all we got out of a "front" was a few drop on the deck. Driest hottest summer on record, after one of the coldest snowiest winters ever...

But.. I suspect things will go bacl to normal all too soon.

[brian Rupnow]

Here in Ontario, Canada its been a terribly wet, cool summer. And last summer wasn't a whole lot better!!! I have heard supposed reasons, ranging from the jet stream to El Nino, but whatever it is, I'm damn sure I don't like it.---Brian

[Evan]

The weather here has been very scary. It hasn't rained in over a month, even the thunderstorms are dry. We are surrounded by giant forest fires and the smoke has been thick in the air for weeks. Some of the fires are in the 100s of square miles in size and are out of control. It's been hotter than ever recorded and longer than ever before with temperatures regularly breaking 100f in many areas for days on end. The UV levels are extreme when the smoke clears. The closest big fire to us is about 80 kilometres distant which is no margin of safety at all. If a wind comes up the fire can move at 30 k per hour as it spreads through the huge stands of dead trees. As of yesterday there are 140 large, out of control fires in BC and about 20 in our region.

The biggest threat to us is the Lava Canyon fire to the west. It's currently 143 sq miles in size and zero percent contained. They can't fight it because of the terrain and the fuel load being all dead trees.

This is that fire a couple of days ago. Note all the dead trees it has for fuel in the foreground.

[Falcon67]

Abilene got over an inch at 60+ MPH winds for about one hour on Thursday, 10 miles down the road we got zip. Cotton needs some rain pretty soon. Most of Texas is a tinder box right now. I'm not goign to have to mow much more, grass is about dormant again. I don't water - water costs too much.

[EDIT] that's a very scary picture above.

[dneufell]

nheng........I remember it raining every weekend (one year in the1980's Laconia N.H.) for the whole summer. Get out of work and be bummed out....Dean

[SGW]

Yeah -- Maine had what seemed like about 3 days of sun in June, not much better in July. A little hot sunny weather in August, but now we're back to cool and wet again. We're some significant amount above average in precipitation (11" or something, I think).

[andy_b]

i thought the rain has been pushed form the northwest to the east due to the ULF antenna array up in Alaska?

supposedly in my area we are still BELOW AVERAGE for rainfall, and it seems like it is raining every other day.

andy b.

[JoeFin]

Been a "Cool Summer" in Northern California too. We've only had 5 or 6 days of Triple Digit Heat so far and at the coast the fog has been so thick it causes drizzle

[darryl]

Here in south west BC, we have a local event called 'party in the park'. It's been running eight weeks now, every friday night, and wrapped last night. For the total duration of it we've had eight drops of rain- two last night, and six about three weeks ago.

I guess I have to say that's per person-