Seattle took just 10 minutes to thwart a rain record Saturday

It took 28 days to nearly set a record in Seattle.

It took 10 minutes to unravel it.

A big rain storm moved over Seattle Saturday morning, bringing the first measurable rain since July 26th.  The lack of rain in August so far had threatened to tie 2012 for the driest August on record at Sea-Tac Airport (at just a “trace”), but just 10 minutes of rain brought the first 0.01” to the gauge.

It certainly didn’t stop there as the rain poured down, dropping a consistent 0.28” in that first hour, then another 0.27” the next.

The 0.55″ of rain in those 120 minutes zoomed Seattle past 36 years’ worth of other August monthly totals. Another 0.01” fell later in the morning, and now Seattle sits at an unremarkable 37th-driest August this year.

Surprisingly though, 0.56 inches in August isn’t a daily record for August 29th — that would be the 1.28” that fell during the infamous rare-August windstorm in 2015. But it’s not even top 3 — nestled in right now at 5th wettest for this date.

The rest of August should finish dry but we are still tracking a widespread rainfall to kickoff September in the middle and end of next week.