Even in a dry time, wet days must eventually show up, and in the Washington area, one of them did on Saturday, a truly rainy day, the wettest day in weeks, a day that set records.
In a politically oriented region, Saturday seemed a convincing victory for the rain party. It appeared to be a rout for the impersonal atmospheric forces that have plunged much of the area into drought.
As of 4 p.m., with the wet forces yet to speak their last soggy syllable, Washington itself had measured 0.83 inches of rain, a lot for a dry time and a record for the date.
The old Jan. 10 record of 0.81 inches was set in 1878 and matched in 1965.
Saturday’s rain was the most in the District since Dec. 2, when the figure was .86. As rain continued to fall into the early evening, that figure appeared to be in range.
At Dulles International Airport, in Northern Virginia on the region’s northwestern edge, the rainfall also set a record, reaching into the triple figures if two decimal places are included.
Dulles recorded 1.18 inches of rain, about one-third of an inch more than Washington. It appeared that Saturday was the wettest day at Dulles in seven months. The last day with more was June 15 with 1.52 inches.
Saturday’s rain seemed to accumulate in the old fashioned way of steady and unpretentious hourly production, one drop after another. It involved no swirling tropical storm, or explosive summertime cloudburst.
Once it began, it kept on raining, It was coming down at 10 a.m., at 11 a.m., at noon and at 1 p.m. and on through the gray winter afternoon. It added perhaps a bit of bleakness to the dreariness potential of mid January.
Even as it seemed to be tapering toward its end, however, the rain also could be found picturesque. Individual droplets gleamed and sparkled like a shower of tiny crystals as they descended through the beams of automobile headlights.
Rain, like other aspects of the weather, seems often to fluctuate in intensity over days, weeks and even months. After relatively dry periods, it is often welcomed as “needed rain.”
Considerable contentiousness might be required to deny that Saturday’s rain was needed rain.
The most recent edition of the U.S. Drought Monitor classed most of the Washington region as afflicted by “severe drought.” It suggested that Saturday’s rain was needed, everywhere, or nearly so.
Needed, it might seem, even if no records had been set.
The post Record rainfall soaks dry Washington region appeared first on Washington Post.
