Spending May 2013 in Portland, Oregon (and many other places in the northwest) was a wild weather ride!
The month started with skies like you see in this picture. Beautiful and bright from sunrise to sunset.
Portland weather spoiled us all: 14 straight days of unusually warm highs, as hot as 85 degrees, with an average high for that stretch of about 78 degrees. That’s what we’d expect in July!
During the first two weeks of May Portland had just .17″ of rain. People turned on their sprinklers. And many of us wondered aloud whether this was the start of a hot, dry summer that’s in this year’s summer outlook.
The answer: uh, definitely not the start of the summer! In fact, by May 22nd we’d fallen so far down the high was just 50 degrees, one of our coolest May days in history and a new record cool high temperature for the date.
And then there’s the rain. Yes, lots of it. Everyone turned their sprinklers off by the last week of May and wondered if dry weather would ever make a comeback. Here and some incredible facts about May 22nd to May 25, 2013 when it comes to Portland rain.
Portland, Vancouver, Hillsboro & Troutdale all set daily rain records on May 22, 2013.
Suddenly, my yard went from bone dry to swampland. Yeah, that’s the story of an Oregon and Washington spring. Three days in May, wetter than entire months!
Oh, and did I mention the snow? 10″ of fresh snow at Mt. Bachelor in about 24 hours on May 22nd & May 23rd is what you see in this picture. Timberline had more than 7″ during that time. So typical, isn’t it? A bunch of mountain snow right before Memorial Day? It really shouldn’t be–but I remember it happening during many of the 17 years I’ve been forecasting weather here in Portland.
And now here we are…finishing May 2013 about 100% wetter than average for the month. So far this year, our 2013 Portland rain situation looks like this:
Portland rainfall January 2013 – below average
Portland rainfall February 2013 – below average
Portland rainfall March 2013 – below average
Portland rainfall April 2013 – below average
Portland rainfall May 2013 – above average
Good to see you back on the screen, Bruce! Strangely enough, it hasn’t been very wet here in Vancouver, BC , even though we’re not far away. up til May 26th, I’ve had only about 1.68 inches. We could get a bit closer to you in terms of amounts in the next 2 days, but this time I think the records will remain in your area.
Thanks Roland. For some reason, most of the action has been diving south to Portland. Guess the weather wants to “Keep Portland Weird” like the bumper sticker says!
Let me know how warm you end up getting next week–we’re trying to get you some heat!
Bruce
Hey! I know this is somewhat off-topic however I had to ask.
Does running a well-established website like yours require a lot of
work? I am completely new to running a blog however I do write in my journal everyday.
I’d like to start a blog so I will be able to share my experience and views online. Please let me know if you have any kind of ideas or tips for brand new aspiring bloggers. Appreciate it!
Lenard:
At times, it seems easy. At other times…it seems like a challenge to come up with something new to post. But it does take more time than you’d think, that’s for sure. One piece of advice I got from other bloggers when I was starting out was to do short posts and link to other posts. That gets your readers new content without you being required to write it all yourself. If you journal everyday–you might easily have something to say, which would be great.
Best of luck and have fun–that’s the main thing–have fun! Bruce