Posted on 03/11/2005 3:22:57 PM PST by ATOMIC_PUNK
SEATTLE (Reuters) - With snowpacks at a quarter of normal levels and sunny, warm days well ahead of the summer months, the home state of the "rainy city" of Seattle declared a drought emergency on Thursday.
Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire authorized the statewide drought emergency, the first since 2001, after unusually low winter snowfalls in the Cascades left rivers on both sides of the mountain range flowing at record-low levels.
Gregoire said in a statement it was "very likely that all areas of our state will experience at least some level of drought this year."
She also told the state's National Guard to get ready to fight wildfires, and will ask the legislature to approve an additional $8.2 million to deal with the drought.
Officials from the state's Department of Ecology said this year's drought could be worst since 1977, the driest year on record.
Similar conditions were affecting other northwestern states, including Idaho, Montana and Oregon.
Although Seattle is known as the "rainy city" with its image of gray skies and Gore-tex wearers, official records put the city's annual average rainfall at 37 inches, below New York City's 47 inches (1,200 mm), according to official records.
Heh, Somebody in Seattle is all wet.
It's incredible. .....sunniest winter I can remember. ....brown vegetation everywhere.
"Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire authorized the statewide drought..."
That woman is pure evil. Put a Republican in office.
Having learned about water resources engineering in my civil engineering education, I can explain how this works. Cities in the Pacific Northwest like Seattle have a reputation for being "rainy" not because they get a lot of rain, but because they have a lot of rainy days. The amount of rainfall they get may not be substantial, but rain does fall more frequently there than in most other parts of the country.
New York, on the other hand, may not have as many rainy days as Seattle -- but it gets more rain in a typical year because it periodically experiences heavy rainstorms (or heavy snowfalls, in the winter) that are rare in Seattle.
It's also worth noting that the most difficult places in the country to design stormwater drainage systems are very dry areas of the Southwest. They hardly get any rainfall and are bone-dry for much of the year, but they are prone to periodic heavy storms and flash-flooding that overwhelm storm drainage systems that would be more than adequate in "rainy" parts of the country like Seattle or New York.
Last year was one of the coolest summers on record (I think it reached 90 degrees only a couple of times), and it rained almost every single weekend from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
The FRADULANT Governor of Washington you mean.
Well, I don’t know about “drainage systems.” Every year people get killed when they try to roll through the little arroyos in NM or AZ. Usually they’re just a little dry dip in the road. It’ll be a perfectly clear day (raining miles away in some mountain range) and *poof* one of them will be filled and running fast with no warning.
You’d literally drive along and drive through one and it’d be dry, drive through another and it’s dry, then bang – next one’s full.
I guess they’re drainage systems, just not man-made. And it's not that people don't see them - they just try to cross. Not realizing that their car is going to act a little like a boat at first, and that the rushing water has a lot more power than they suspect.
Oh well, they've been doing that since cars were invented, I guess. Probably before.
All that hot air from the left wing lunatics that reside there is keeping Seattle dry.
Give me a few more minutes to respond so I can figure out how to blame Bush.
Oh man, that's the first picture I've seen of her. She's determined evil.
This will be rectified.
It's incredible. .....sunniest winter I can remember. ....brown vegetation everywhere.
As compared to Phoenix where green vegetation is everywhere (for now)!
I'm going to drink beer to save on water.
What's the status on that? I haven't heard anything in a while.
I may have to break down and invest in air conditioning this year. It's already motorcycle weather.
Still oozing its way through preliminary court hearings. I hope the thing gets sped up before The Sheeple lose interest in the fraudulent witch's theft of office.
Pretty much all the pedestrians were just standing and gawking....including myself.
It's unbelievable that today occurred in March.
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