Yesterday's Impressive Rainfall Totals

There were some amazing rainfall totals on Wednesday, with particularly heavy amounts (2-3 inches) hitting the foothills of the Cascades.  Here are the 24h totals ending around 9:45 PM Wednesday.  You will notice a big east-west gradient across the Sound, ranging from a few tenths over the Kitsap peninsula to inches over the eastside.  Port Angeles and Victotia had almost nothing.

Precipitation actually decreased as you went up into the mountains.  A lot of precipitation occurred as unstable air was forced upwards on the western side of the Cascades.

Seattle Rainwatch, based on only the Camano Is. radar,  also showed some of these features, including the particularly heavy rain southeast of Seattle, and rainshadowing north of the Olympics.

A number of daily records were broken yesterday.  Here is a sampler from the National Weather Service:

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SEATTLE WA
127 AM PDT THU JUL 24 2014

...RECORD DAILY MAXIMUM RAINFALL ACROSS WESTERN WASHINGTON...

A RECORD RAINFALL OF 0.76 INCHES WAS SET AT SEATTLE-TACOMA WA
AIRPORT YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 0.54 SET IN 1949.

A RECORD RAINFALL OF 0.89 INCHES WAS SET AT SEATTLE WA WFO
YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 0.07 SET IN 2007.

A RECORD RAINFALL OF 0.27 INCHES WAS SET AT OLYMPIA WA AIRPORT
YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 0.25 SET IN 1949.

A RECORD RAINFALL OF 0.72 INCHES WAS SET AT BELLINGHAM WA AIRPORT
YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 0.22 SET IN 1949.

A RECORD RAINFALL OF 0.63 INCHES WAS SET AT HOQUIAM WA AIRPORT
YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 0.04 SET IN 1995.

The "bar" is low for breaking precipitation records this time of the year, but still we had a lot of rain.

This morning we are getting some "backwash" on the western side of the low, but this precipitation is lighter and should fade out this afternoon.  The worst is over.