This post will display a history of water-year cumulative precipitation traces from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. A water-year defined here crosses parts of two calendar years and runs from October 1 of year 1 to September 30 of year 2. For instance, the water year 1972-73 runs from October 1, 1972 to September 30, 1973.
The reasons for using water years is simple. The Puget Sound area can be thought of at a higher level of having two basic seasons: a wet season running from October through March when most of our annual precipitation falls, and a dry season which runs from April through September.
Figure 1 is the baseline chart and shows cumulative precipitation traces at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport from 1948-49 through the start of the 2021-22 water years. The data comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS). These data extracts normally list daily precipitation totals. I’ve summed these values up for each water year.
Figure 1 also shows some other graphic elements. In the lower left corner, a blue box appears highlighting the first two months of the water year. The reasons for this box is simple. We just completed this two month period for the 2021-22 water year. It was a very wet period in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest in general. I placed this box on the chart to allow for easy comparisons of this year’s heavy rains with other years’. As you will see later, this year’s start to the water year was one of the wettest since the late 1940s, but not the wettest.
Two other key elements added to the baseline chart include a 30Y climatic normal reference line for two climate periods. These periods are the 1981-2010 climate normals for precipitation at SeaTac and the 1991-2020 climate normals. These are standard 30 year daily averages published by NOAA/NWS. As you can see, the more recent 30 year normals show a higher level of daily precipitation than the 1981-2010 period, adding up to a little more than 2 inches additional rain per year at SeaTac.
One final observation is that precipitation rates vary widely within each annual trace and between the final annual totals of all traces. The wettest years had roughly 51-52 inches of rain over the course of 12 months, the driest years had less than 25 inches over a 12 month period.
Figure 1. Precipitation traces for each water year from 1948-49 through 2021-22 (to the current date).
I only have two full water-year traces from the 1940s. These are shown in Figure 2. Interestingly, both years began the first two months with similar trace patterns. After about mid-December, each trace line diverges for the remainder of the year, one towards the high side of annual precipitation totals, the other towards the low end. At a glance, and without performing the statistical calculation, it appears as if the final year-end totals span the first or second standard deviations of all year-end precipitation totals.
Figure 2. Cumulative precipitation traces for available SeaTac data in the 1940s.
The 1950 traces in Figure 3 show that the start of the wet seasons varied widely during that decade and that, in general, it was a decade when annual precipitation totals hewed towards current climate normals or were generally higher in precipitation.
Figure 3. Cumulative precipitation traces for available SeaTac data in the 1950s. Tracks in the 1950s trend towards years with greater precipitation.
Figure 4 shows the 1960s traces were distributed about evenly above and below current climate normals and tend to not have extraordinarily wet or dry annual totals.
Figure 4. Cumulative precipitation traces for available SeaTac data in the 1960s. Precipitation tracks in the 1960s hover more closely to 30Y climate tracks about evenly above and below these normals.
Figure 5 shows the 1970s traces. It appears most years in the 1970s began relatively dry. From December on, the annual totals varied widely. This might be the decade with the widest and most uniform spread between very wet and very dry years.
Figure 7. Cumulative precipitation traces for available SeaTac data in the 1970s. Half the 1970’s traces hover close to the climate normals. The remaining traces are biased towards both extremes: wet years or dry years.
Most annual traces in the 1980s hewed close to current climatic normals, though biased on the dry side of those normal. Figure 6 shows a few years were substantially drier by year’s end.
Figure 8. Cumulative precipitation traces for available SeaTac data in the 1980s. The 1980’s traces tend to be biased towards drier than climatic normal years. The also tended to start the years tightly around climatic normals.
The precipitation traces for the 1990s, illustrated in Figure 7, appear to be evenly distributed around the current climatic norms much like the 1960s traces. However, the 1990s traces are dispersed more widely, reaching towards the wettest and driest annual limits for all of the traces. Collectively, the 1960s and 1990s traces in the early part of each year exhibit pretty similar patterns, hewing close to current climatic normals except for one particularly dry autumn in each subset.
Figure 7. Most years began with fairly normal precipitation levels except for perhaps two. By years’ end, the traces were evenly, if broadly, distributed around current climatic normals. This decade saw the most varied ditribution of precipitation totals at the end of the year.
Figure 8 shows the traces for the 2000s. The year end precipitation totals tend not to trend towards extremes and are maybe slightly biased towards drier years. But the start of the wet season (October-November) varied widely for this period. Some of the wettest starts to winter began here and even a drier one as well. Many other decade charts showed must tighter distributions around the current climatic normal lines.
Figure 8. Cumulative precipitation traces for available SeaTac data in the 2000s. Traces appear to show wide autumn variations then trending towards an even distribution around climatic norms at years end.
The 2010s year-end precipitation totals trended towards wetter years. These traces are illustrated in Figure 9. This decade, along with four very wet years in the 1990s might explain why climatic normal curves jumped for the 1991-2020 period. The starts of the water-years in the 2010s also trended towards wetter Octobers and Novembers in most years. The 2010s also hosted some very long, dry summer periods.
Figure 9. Cumulative precipitation traces for available SeaTac data in the 2010s. Trends show wide variation in the autumn months and a bias towards wetter year-end totals.
The 2020s are too new to host many precipitation traces. In fact, we’ve only completed one year of this decade and only started a second water-year trace. In Figure 10, the single, complete year hewed very closely towards climatic normals after a wet late winter and early spring. This was followed by a very long and dry late spring and summer period.
The start of its second year has been very wet.
Figure 10. Cumulative precipitation traces for available SeaTac data in the 2020s. The 2020-21 year followed current climatic normals closely. The current year has begun very wet.
Conclusions and Notes
Looking at the traces, I’m not really sure I’m seeing any convincing trending decade-to-decade. The only long-term trending I’m seeing is between the climatic normal lines where wetter late winters and early springs seem to be trending. But these two lines are drawn from only two sets of averaged daily data. I would be more convinced if other 30-year climatic normal periods were plotted here, say for the 1951-80, 1961-90 and 1971-2000 periods. I may do so for Part 2 of this blog entry.
Sure, the 2010s appear to be quite wet. But that decade was preceded by several decades of precipitation traces distributed pretty evenly around the climatic normal curves. And the 1970s and 80s trended towards the drier side of the distributions. They, in turn, were preceded by a pretty normal series of plots in the 1960s and, again, wetter trending in the 1950s. Who knows what’s in store for this decade. It’s way too soon to tell.
And this second point brings up an important third one: the arbitrary definition of a decadal dataset. I used the common calendar dates to group my datasets and plots, begin each set of plots with a year ending in a zero and enclosing the dataset with a trace from a year ending in a nine. But I could have just as easily chosen decadal sets such as 1974-83; 1984-93; 1994-03; etc. Who knows what trends we might detect then?
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I think I’ll plot a Part 2 post to this topic. It will take some time due to the need to post-process the data. I have data preceding the 1950s going all the way back to the 1890s for the Seattle area. However, this data is typically from other locations, including the Portage Bay area in North Seattle and Boeing Field in South Seattle. These areas are 10-20 miles from Seattle-Tacoma Airport.
I think too, I will plot climatic normal curves for other 30-year periods to see if any trending is detected within those longer-term datasets.
That’s all for now.