It has been a rainy start to autumn in Seattle in 2021. Figure 1 shows a plot of the cumulative precipitation at Seattle-Tacoma (SeaTac) International Airport since the beginning of the 2021-22 water year. Water years in Seattle are date-based construct starting on October 1st and running through September 30 of the following year. These are often used when discussing precipitation events since the west coast of North America and specifically the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. can often be divided into a wet season (late fall through early spring) and a dry season (late summer through early autumn).
The plot below highlights the current water year precipitation accumulation but also includes similar traces for all water years at SeaTac since 2002-03. Compared to recent years, this year – just starting – is quite wet.
Click on any figure below to expand it.
Figure 1. Cumulative rainfall, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, current water-year. Also show are traces from previous water-years, 2002-03 through 2020-21.
Figure 2 highlights on of the past two decades wettest start to winter for comparison purposes. This was the 2006-07 water year. November of that month registered close to 15.6 inches of rain.
It has not been nearly as wet this November with roughly 8 inches of precipitation so far, about two-thirds of the way through the month. But if you compare the two lines on the chart, Seattle has had a much wetter October in 2021, so the total precipitation to date is similar between the 2006-07 and 2021-22 water years.
Figure 2. Comparison of current water-year cumulative precipitation with the 2006-07 water-year trace.
Figure 3 shows an additional year with a very wet start, the water year of 2016-17. This wet year reached approximately the same total precipitation as 2006-07 for the two-month, OCT-NOV period, a value of roughly 17 inches total. Normal precipitation totals for Seattle-Tacoma for that two-month period is typically about 10 inches. In the 2021-22 water year, with November still one week away from completing, we have seen 13.66 inches of rain since October 1.
Figure 3. Current water-year cumulative precipitation at SeaTac Airport with the 2006-07 and 2016-17 precipitation traces highlighted.
Figure 4 is a little bit different than the first three charts. I often track weather out of SeaTac. But I rarely step out to track weather in other areas, even areas not so far from home. Last week, in the northwestern part of Washington State and in southern British Columbia, large volumes of rain, arriving in the form of an atmospheric river, flooded the region. The flooding was quite severe, impacting many homes and farms, and creating great havoc and damage to many roads and highways. Many people were stranded by the flood waters and needed to be rescued. Several people have died in this storm.
I’ve plotted the cumulative rain totals recorded at the Bellingham International Airport since October 1. Bellingham is a mid-sized city approximately 90 miles north of Seattle, and very close to the flood zone. In fact, parts of Bellingham were under water for several days after these recent storms.
In Figure 4 you can see the total amount of rain falling in Bellingham has been very similar to that of SeaTac. Until about November 8, Belingham was tracking about 2 inches less in rain compared to Seattle from the start of the new water year. But from November 9-15, Bellingham received approximately 6.6 inches of rain, about 2.5 inches more than Seattle in that week.
I regularly keep track of these precipitation vs. time charts for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Adding Bellingham totals to the chart was only for comparison reasons only. Inthe most recent storm, it’s likely the Seattle area was protected to some extent by the Olympic Range to our west. Bellingham is not as well protected.
Figure 4. For comparison purposes, this figure shows the current year precipitation trace at Bellingham International Airport with the past 20 year traces at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Note: Bellingham is approximately 90 miles north of Seattle.
The United States Geological Service (USGS) keeps track of river flows across the country. Some of this data is exposed to the public. Two gaging stations the USGS keeps near the Whatcom County flood zone are the stations on the Nooksack River at Everson and at Ferndale. Everson is about 12 miles ENE of Ferndale as the crow flies. The monitoring station at Ferndale appears to have records published over a much longer time period, so this data will be used for comparison purposes. The Nooksack river flows from the Mount Shuksan and Mount Baker watersheds. On the other hand, the station at Everson, also on the Nooksack, is much closer to the Sumas River which presumedly caused much of the flooding in the Fraser River Valley in British Columbia.
The Nooksack river major flood stage at Ferndale is 23 feet. The Nooksack river crested above this stage on November 16 (Figure 5, lower chart) at 23.7 feet.
Figure 5. Nooksack River stage charts from Ferndale WA from November 15-22, 2021. Chart is courtesy of the USGS.
Figure 6. Nooksack River stage charts from Everson, WA from November 15-22, 2021. Chart is courtesy of USGS.
Table 1 shows the values of historic stage crests on the Nooksack River at Ferndale for crests above 12.25 feet. The values were copied into this table from the source listed below the table. I entered the most recent value (blue entry) for 11/16/2021 since the web site values had not been updated yet.
This November’s flood stage ranked with the top twenty events at this gage site.
Table 1. Record gage levels for the Nooksack River at Ferndale WA. Source: NOAA / NWS.
Figure 7 is a dot plot of the historic crests on the Nooksack River at Ferndale ordered from great to least. Color coding indicate the decade of the event.
Figure 7. A dot plot showing the historic flood stages on the Nooksack River at Ferndale WA.
Figure 8 is a series of dot plots of the same data as shown in Figure 7. The data has been grouped in decades to see if any trends can be found due to time. Decades are an arbitrary grouping. But often we group data in years, decades and centuries to see patterns time-related data, so I used decade groupings here.
I don’t see any obvious patterns in the decade groupings other than some early decades had fewer but more severe events and more recent decades had more events but events which appeared less severe in terms of gage height. Of course, the 2020s are just beginning. It is possible, I suppose, that less severe events in the early 1910-30 period were not as diligently recorded. And it might also be true that less severe events in more recent decades may do more damage due to greater populations and development in the area. These are just guesses.
Click on any chart to enlarge. You can use left and right arrow keys to navigate between decadal sets of data.
Figure 8. A series of dot plots of ordered historic crests on the Nooksack River at Ferndale WA grouped by decade. Click to enlarge.
Figure 9 shows the data in Table 1 in a time-series chart format (which is basically a horizontal dot plot sorted by time rather than rank).
Again, strong patterns are hard to find, other than the first half of the timeline tends to show greater historic crests. I don’t know the reasons for this. Maybe storms were stronger in the past. Perhaps physical river control methods have been installed over the years to help regulate flow. Since 1965, it is difficult to discern any distinct pattern to the historic crests other than every 15 years or so, a moderate-high or major flood event occurs.
Figure 9. Time-series chart of historic crests on the Nooksack River at Ferndale, WA.
Finally, it should be noted that parts of northern Whatcom County and much of the Fraser River Valley were flooded and not on the Nooksack River, but rather on the Sumas River. The Nooksack flows west to Puget Sound from the North Cascades. The Sumas River flows north into Canada. The U.S. border town of Sumas was severely flooded the past week as was much of the nearby Fraser River Valley.
There is a point near Everson, WA where the Nooksack river runs very close to the Sumas River. The surrounding land is generally flat. Literature suggests past overflows of the Nooksack have flowed into the Sumas near Everson. The distance appears to be less than two miles at the closest points
I suspect this is what happened this past week. I’m not a hydrologist, so I don’t really know. But with all of the water falling last week and the weeks leading up to this event, it seems likely. River gage data on the Sumas for the public was difficult to find.
Figure 10 shows the proximity of the two rivers. Directionally, north extends into the top background in the image.
Figure 10. Proximity of the Nooksak River to the Sumas River. Image courtesy of Google Earth. Click to enlarge.
The Bellingham Herald is the paper of record in Whatcom County and Northwest Washington. The paper has excellent coverage of the recent floods and photo essays of past historic floods. Flooding in this region is not uncommon. It is a flat landscape at the base of very steep mountains subject to heavy winter rains and runoffs.
FULL DISCLOSURE
I am not a meteorologist, climate scientist, data scientist, geologist nor hydrologist. I am simply a (retired) engineer who has some familiarity with numbers, basic statistics and probability statistics who enjoys looking at readily available public data and trying to make sense of things. I enjoy building data visualizations from data I find much like others enjoy working daily crosswords or sudoku puzzles. Local weather, climate and hydrology science are complex subjects. Take what you read and find here with this in context.