Last Night, It Rained

On the last day of May, cusp of June, it is not impossible to get rain in San Jose, but it isn’t exactly typical. Further, were we having the increasingly hot and dry predicted projected by the Warmista Activists, it wouldn’t be cool and wet in any case.

Yet I awoke this morning to water dripping from the eves, wet sidewalks and streets, and a minor puddle on a plastic planter pan in the back yard. Given that it was all bone dry a couple of days ago, and I have no sprinklers, the necessary conclusion is that it rained during the night. (The heavy clouds with streaking to the East of me, in the direction the wind goes, tells me I woke up just about a 1/2 hour too late to see the actual event).

Wunderground still says “No Rain”, but they are at the airport where it is hotter anyway, and the equipment seems to not measure “trace” well. I have a plastic pan that goes under a pot in the back yard. It has about 1/3 inch in the edge where the slope drains toward. Spread out, it is likely about 1/10 inch, so maybe below their resolution. Yet the street is still wet…

A decade back, we would get our last rain about April. Sometimes March. One year we had the “miracle March” that caught us up to normal on rainfall during a significant drought / shortfall, then it went dead dry. But the end of May? First day of June? Folks generally figure it’s 100% for Memorial Day BBQ outdoors. (Though even with a morning shower, it drys by BBQ time).

So much like the tendency to humidity I’d noted, we also are having a tendency to more cool / cold showers. The weather here comes strait in off the ocean, about 20 miles away. Usually from the North West (when it, rarely, comes from the direct West or South West it is called a “Pineapple Express” and causes great flooding and makes the news in a big way). Storms form in the Gulf of Alaska and drift down to us as cold wet things reaching the end of their life. Minor showers come from cold wet air over the water (from Alaska and along the coast) heading inland and getting “ridge lift” off the mountains, then raining out on the backside. So some very wet air came ashore, got lifted, and wrung out. This tells me it is cold and wet over the ocean.

Wunderground climate history says it can rain more:

        	Actual  	Average 	Record 
Precipitation 	0.00 in 	0.01 in 	0.29 in (1902)

Now that is reporting an average of 1/100 of an inch. I wonder how they claim to measure 1/100 inch increments… but whatever. The record ever was set 115 years ago at less than 1/3 of an inch. Clearly we’re in a slightly wetter than average state today, even if they haven’t noticed it yet, but not at a record. So this is what would be called “normal” and maybe on the cool and damp side. Certainly not warming, and very much not “hot and drought”. California has had record to near record rainfall over much of the area, especially the northern parts, this year. Dams near their tops, lakes are full, drought restrictions finally buried as even Governor Moonbeam had to admit it was over, even if he was a year late…

But what really has my fancy all tickled, is the potential for rain in June again…
I’ll be watching that one closely. ;-)

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