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Renner 1
Mon Sep 06, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton, and this is The Weather Notebook. Our Seattle writer, David
Laskin, has written about his rainy hometown, Seattle, Wash. But just how rainy is
Seattle? Surprise, says KING-5 TV Chief Meteorologist, Jeff Renner.
Renner: In fact, locations such as Miami and New York City are all wetter than Seattle.
We get that reputation because we get much more frequent rain and it tends to be
spread out. Our rainy period, Bryan, tends to be from mid-October to mid-March and
we get these great storms that move across the Pacific Ocean and dump voluminous
amounts of precipitation. During the summer months we tend to get this on-shore flow
of precipitation and cloud cover and we just get this very frequent drizzle. But, actually,
mid-July to mid-August are beautiful periods.
How do you think this misperception came about?
Renner: We want to keep Seattle pretty much to ourselves. But seriously, it’s because
people come out here and it tends to be gray and it tends to be drizzly and they say:
"Oh, it rains all the time."
What’s it like to forecast here? Is it changeable or is it pretty steady?
Renner: Anything I say is going to be countered by meteorologists elsewhere but
generally speaking this is considered one of the three most difficult areas to forecast,
the other two being sort of the central Atlantic Coast and the front range of the Rockies.
Our weather is basically modulated or affected by terrain and, just to give one example
– we can get absolute downpours in the central part of Puget Sound near, for example,
Seattle and Everett. Just to the north, just to the south it can be sunny and absolutely
dry.
Back with Jeff tomorrow. The Weather Notebook is funded by Subaru of America and
the National Science Foundation. We are a program of the Mount Washington
Observatory.
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