It's with a heavy heart that I have added a new page to my web site: Mazama. I had to put my dog Mazama down on August 20. This past year has been a slow and steady decline for him, and the last couple of days he wasn't even able to stand up. He's been a good dog and a good friend for over 15 years, I will miss him.

Happy mid-July. Some interesting summer statistics here, especially in light of a good chunk of the country baking in a heat wave. I've only got data for the past ten summers here at my location. But over those ten years, here are some interesting numbers. All data is through July 17 of each year.

It certainly has been a cool summer so far. And admittedly I much prefer this over a very hot summer like 2008. That year by this time we had already had 24 days above 80, 6 days above 90, and even 1 day above 100.

Happy springtime! If you were out Friday afternoon between noon and 3 PM you might have experienced it. Otherwise, springtime temperatures have been rather elusive this year.

March was a rather interesting month. We didn't hit 60 until the 31st, setting records in some spots for the latest 60 degree day. And virtually every day in March was at or below the average high. Even the 31st was only a few degrees above average.

But it was the incessant rain that was really impressive. It kicked off on the first with the end of storm that began on the last day of February. 2.19" of rain fell during that storm, although only 0.56" was technically in March. But that was just the beginning. I recorded rain fall on 29 of the 31 days in March. Including 24 straight days from the 7th through the 30th. I recorded 7.04" in total for March. Most days did not have a lot of rain, but I did have 19 days with at least a tenth of an inch of rain.

And I'll leave you with this note. The long range outlook for spring is for a cooler and wetter spring than average. I doubt it will be worse than last year, but it's possible. And we're certainly on track for it so far.

Happy New Year everyone!

A chilly start to 2011. And we often get frozen precipitation in our transition to/from freezing weather. Sure enough, the forecast is for a possibility of some freezing rain Tuesday night and Wednesday. It could prove to be interesting, the surface areas should still be pretty cold mid-week.

A quick recap of December's rain. We got a whopping 9.19" of rain during the month. More impressive to me was the frequency of rain. We had three days with an inch of rain or greater. We had nineteen days with .1" of rain. And 26 days with measurable precipitation. The highlight was probably in late December. It started raining approximately 11:15 AM on December 27, and effectively didn't stop until 11:30 PM on Dec 28. 36 straight hours! We had a couple more showers that night, and my 48 hour storm total ended up being 3.10".

December wrapped up a year that saw plenty of rain. I recorded a total of 50.13" of rain. And who can forget our very wet spring this year. April through June set several rainfall records, it seemed like summer would never arrive. And in some people's opinion, summer never did arrive.

Wishing everyone a healthy and happy 2011.

Well that was a decent storm to start the season off. I was awakened at 6 AM this morning to very heavy rain - .35" in just 20 minutes. We had some more heavy rain later in the morning, putting us up over an inch for the day (it's 4:15 PM as I write this). We got 1.09" so far today, and .80" yesterday, so we're just shy of 2" for the weekend. No more major storms for a couple of days, but as of now it sounds like Thursday and Saturday there will be a couple more storms coming in. Welcome to fall in Oregon.

In non-weather news, I have two extra tickets to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert on Nov 15 at the Rose Garden. They're on the floor in the 4th row. Please contact me if you're interested. I just ask for my cost back, I'm not looking to make a profit. Thanks.