Kaneohe holds record in West for rainy days
Records show the city had 247 days of rainfall in a row from August 1993 to April 1994
Staff and news service reports
Despite a run of rainy days in Seattle since Dec. 19 that's approaching the city's record, it isn't even close to breaking the Western U.S. record for number of consecutive days of rain.
If rain keeps falling on Seattle until Thursday, it will meet its previous record of 33 consecutive days of rain, set in 1953.
But Kaneohe recorded 247 consecutive days of rain from Aug. 27, 1993 through April 30, 1994, according to records from the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nev.
The statistic is in a section of the climate center's Web site titled "State Extremes," and it counts any day that had at least 1/100th of an inch of rain or snow.
"Hawaii has some amazing rainfall statistics," Jim Ashby, Western Regional Climate Center climatologist told the Associated Press this week.
For Kaneohe residents, their town's record didn't raise an eyebrow yesterday.
Longtime Kaneohe resident Richard Kuniyoshi said he doesn't remember 1993-94 as particularly rainy, but he doesn't doubt the record for a minute.
"Could be," he said. "It does rain a little bit every day and then stop, especially up where I live at Castle Hills, near the Koolaus."
In Washington state, Gov. Christine Gregoire declared a state of emergency in 12 counties on Friday because of ongoing rain. Seattle had 0.57 of an inch of rain on Thursday for a total of 12.41 inches since Dec. 19, when the city started toward its own record. Friday, another rainy day, was the 26th successive day of rain.
Ashby noted that rainy days in Hawaii are different from precipitation in the Pacific Northwest. "It's not quite as overcast and dismal. You get some sun between," he said.
Hal Herfurth "has no particular memory" of a string of rainy days in the fall, winter and spring of 1993-94. "But in Kaneohe," he said, "it rains all the time."