Weather Eye: 29 years and still lots of weather to write about

This week is a milestone for me as it is my 29th year writing this weather column in The Columbian. My first Weather Eye column appeared on Dec. 3, 1990. Boy, there has certainly been a lot of weather to talk about over those years and a deluge of water in the rain gauge, over 100 feet to be exact here in Vancouver.

Clark County during this time frame has seen the entry and departure of several El Nino and La Nina episodes, windstorms, floods and temperature swings of over 100 degrees from a high of 108 degrees to frigid lows in the single digits in the outlying areas. Not to mention a very white Christmas in 2008.

I think you can count on one hand the number of columns I have missed over nearly three decades, as I always write my column, even when traveling. I may take a vacation but the weather doesn’t. Sharing my thoughts, prose and a bit of humor with you, the reader, is most enjoyable.

Last month Vancouver reached a milestone too in the weather department as the sixth-driest November on record. And Vancouver’s records go back to the late 1800s. We measured only 1.57 inches compared to the average of 5.91 inches.

OK, I know someone out there is going to ask me when the other dry months were, so here they are, beginning with number 10: 2.18 inches in 1943; 2.11 inches in 1967; 1.98 inches in 1956; 1.77 inches in 1939; 1.57 inches in 2019; 1.34 inches in 1993; 1.13 inches in 1976; 1.05 inches in 1952; .73 of an inch in 1929; and the driest November, .58 of an inch in 1936.

A big thanks to Clinton Rockey at the National Weather Service in Portland for digging these figures out for us. Not much rain in store this week, with light rain Friday and Saturday. Models forecast a more typical December weather pattern beginning later next week. Rain in the lowlands and snow in the mountains. We can only hope.