Weather watchdogs track every drop

While the rest of us celebrate surviving what we thought was the wettest month in Seattle's recorded history, University of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass is throwing cold water on the party.

Mass insists that the old rainfall record, set in December 1933, still stands — at least for downtown Seattle.

"We didn't break the record, and I can prove it," he said.

He's got a good argument, which we'll get to later.

And he doesn't mind being the lone voice on this point of meteorological minutiae.

That's because details matter to Mass, and he's not alone. A legion of self-proclaimed weather nuts shares his passion for wind speeds, dew points, precipitation totals — and precision.

Among them is them is Doug Olson, who started collecting weather data when he was 8.

His grandfather kept a journal crammed with entries on temperature, rainfall and cloud cover. Olson tagged along on the daily rounds and learned to read a mercury barometer, measure precipitation to a tenth of an inch and observe the sky.

Today, Olson teaches sixth-grade science at Sakai Intermediate School on Bainbridge Island and has been gathering his own weather data for more than 20 years.

"I am a total junkie," he admitted. "I get thrilled just by looking at the barometer every day."

Like most junkies, he loves excitement — amply provided by Mother Nature last month.

"It's not even winter yet, and we've had snow and ice and subzero weather," Olson said with delight.

An automated weather station he installed on the school roof measures solar brightness, ultraviolet radiation and all the basic yardsticks of meteorology. The 53-year-old Olson downloads his numbers onto the Web and uses them in lessons. City engineers call him for data.

Sophisticated new instruments allow amateur meteorologists such as Olson to track local weather with the fanaticism of baseball fans scrutinizing slugging percentages and earned-run averages. In fact, many off-the-shelf packages are nearly as good as official weather gauges, Mass said. "One of the great revolutions of the last 10 years is the availability of fairly inexpensive but fairly high-quality weather instruments."

Mass even relied on a couple of the backyard measurements to bolster his argument about Seattle's rain record.

Range of equipment

Some weather-data collection units sell for as little as $200, but Steve Allwine saved up for a $1,100 deluxe version that was tested at the North and South poles. Then he bought another. And another.

"It kind of snowballed," he said with a laugh.

Now, the 24-year-old marketing director monitors the weather at his home in Enumclaw, his office in Tukwila and a family house in Ellensburg. "I just love being able to track the data and know exactly what's going on," he said. The architectural firm he works for is using the data to design a solar array they hope will cut the company's power costs 30 to 50 percent.

Allwine's computerized system also produces localized forecasts, which he often finds more accurate than National Weather Service pronouncements. And a software package allows him to post his data online at The Weather Underground.

If better instruments have raised the quality of data backyard enthusiasts can collect, the Internet has transformed what was once a solitary obsession to a shared source of information — and fascination.

From Bothell, Trish Foust trades weather data with friends in her home state of Minnesota, where she remembers days so cold that hot coffee flung into the air froze before it hit the ground.

As a volunteer weather spotter in the Midwest, Foust used to chase storms until baseball-sized hail totaled her car. As members of the local Coast Guard Auxiliary, she and her partner stood watch off Everett in their motor boat during the recent floods, ready to assist boaters in trouble.

"Severe weather adds spice to life," Foust said.

The 35-year-old computer-network administrator likes to combine that adrenaline rush with doing good for others — hence her willingness to venture out when most people prefer to sip a cup of tea by the fire. She hopes her meteorological data will someday help scientists answer questions about weather patterns and global climate change.

"Maybe in 20 or 30 years, we'll have a big enough weather database," she said.

Backyard data

No need to wait that long, Mass says. He's working on a project to assemble the backyard data already available and use it to build a detailed picture of climatological variation across the region.

And that brings us back to his point about Seattle's rain record, which is based on that regional variation.

The 1933 record of 15.33 inches was measured in downtown Seattle. This year's November total of 15.63 inches was measured at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where record-keeping started in 1948.

It's correct to say that November set a record for the most precipitation recorded in a month at the airport, Mass said.

But it's not fair to say it broke the 1933 record.

"It's much wetter at the airport than downtown," he said. "You can't compare them."

Despite its soggy reputation, Seattle actually gets some protection from the rain shadow cast by the Olympic Mountains, he explained. But Sea-Tac doesn't.

Mass gathered rainfall numbers from across the Puget Sound area to show that during November the geographical pattern held: more rain at Sea-Tac, less at Boeing Field and even less in Seattle, where the highest number recorded by city gauges was 14.8 inches.

If the same pattern held in 1933, Mass estimates that rainfall at the airport probably would have been about 17 inches — far higher than recorded this month.

"So you can't say November was the wettest month that ever occurred in Seattle," he said.

But does it matter?

For someone whose career revolves around numerical simulations and data arrays so vast they require days of computer time to crunch, that's the wrong question.

"It's not hurting anybody," he said of the newly proclaimed record. "It's just not true."

Sandi Doughton: 206-464-2491 or sdoughton@seattletimes.com