SEATTLE — Rain never looked so good.
As November broke official records for the wettest month ever recorded here, residents across the region found themselves in the somewhat bizarre position of being thrilled by a warm rain Thursday -- if only because it helped wash away the snow, slush, ice and frozen muck of recent days that had closed schools and turned commuting into slow-motion torture.
The National Weather Service confirmed before the day ended Thursday that with 15.63 inches, there had been more precipitation in Seattle this November than in any month in the 115 years that federal records have been kept. Freezing rain mixed with snow late Wednesday broke the previous record, set in 1933 with 15.26 inches, said Johnny Burg, a weather service forecaster here. Seattle's November average is 5.9 inches.
With temperatures warming Thursday, though, the arctic-like damage was quickly becoming a memory, and for many not a good one.
"After Monday night -- 4 a.m. Tuesday, actually -- I'll take the rain any time," said David Donaldsen, one of thousands of football fans whom authorities said took as long as 8 hours to get home when traffic turned to an icy standstill after a sold-out NFL game.
"It looks like Green Bay, but this is Seattle," ESPN announcer Mike Tirico said as snow and sleet blanketed Qwest Field. Actually, Green Bay was 7 degrees warmer. (The Seahawks beat the Packers.)
Most precipitation in Seattle comes as rain, not snow, even in the dead of winter -- and sustained freezing temperatures are rare.
And the truth is, for all the talk about how soggy Seattle is, in some ways it is not.
"Seattle's really not a particularly wet city compared to a lot of other places," said Christopher C. Burt, co-author of "Extreme Weather: A Guide and Record Book."
"People have a hard time believing it, but it's true," he said.
Atlanta, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and plenty of other U.S. cities get more average annual rainfall than Seattle does, said Burt, citing National Weather Service statistics.
"Although Seattle gets a lot of rainy days," he said, "the rainfalls generally aren't intense at all, so it doesn't add up to all that much."
And, striking as the new monthly precipitation record may be to Seattleites, it doesn't come close to the monthly record in Los Angeles, which recorded 20.51 inches in February 1998 at a UCLA measuring site.
