The driest August on record in Seattle, and food prices soar on a global scale

For the first time since at least 1891, the city of Seattle was bone-dry during the entire month of August. The previous record least ever rainfall in Seattle during August was a three-way tie of .01 inches in the past 122 years, last occurring in 1951.

The current dry spell could challenge the 51-day record without a drop of rain set in 1951. The last measurable moisture at the Sea-Tac Airport was .04 inches on July 22. As of this Thursday, Sept. 6 writing, that was 49 days and counting.

It's ironic that this streak of dry weather arrived directly on the soggy heels of the wettest June on record in Seattle and locally in Coeur d'Alene as well.

We measured just .23 inches of precipitation in August in town, a full inch below the normal for the 31-day period of 1.23 inches since 1895, the inception of local area weather record-keeping.

Our driest Augusts on record since 1895 were totally rainless in town. They occurred in 1913, 1915, 1917, 1931, 1955, 1967, 1969 and 1991. Recently, only .06 inches of precipitation was gauged in Coeur d'Alene during all of August in 2006 at the end of a very hot summer season that featured four afternoons in a row between July 21 and July 24 with scorching temperatures well above 100 degrees. Since things turned cooler across the Inland Northwest in 2007, we've only seen a single summer afternoon in Coeur d'Alene above the century mark, 103 degrees on Aug. 17, 2008. Our warmest afternoon this past summer was the 98-degree reading that occurred on Sunday, Aug. 19, fortunately a few days ahead of the 2012 North Idaho Fair and Rodeo, which featured near-perfect weather.

The first week of September was rainless across the Pacific Northwest including North Idaho. We enjoyed more great weather during the Labor Day weekend. My friend Dennis Williams, the paint store guy, took me high up into the mountains to pick huckleberries on Monday. I got about a half gallon of rather small berries, but it will be just enough to enjoy Sharon's homemade huckleberry bread.

Things in the nearby forests to the east of Coeur d'Alene are tinder-dry, but the cooler nights in the upper 30s and low to mid 40s are helping to some extent along with increasing amounts of clear sky dew.

GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLIES HURT BY SUMMER DROUGHTS

Not only have crops been destroyed in the U.S. this blistering summer of 2012 by the worst drought since the 'Dust Bowl Days' of the 1930s, but droughts in Brazil, southwestern Europe, Russia, the Ukraine and parts of India and Pakistan, where the summer monsoon was a big disappointment, have likewise resulted in widespread crop failures.

Food prices are 'skyrocketing' around the world. Famines will certainly increase in Africa, Asia and other areas already suffering from severe food shortages.

By extreme contrast to the parching droughts, eastern Asia, China and Japan have seen crop yields of corn, soybeans, groundnuts and cotton destroyed by a series of strong typhoons in recent weeks. The resulting floods have also hurt sugar cane production in the coastal areas of China.

Also, like in some areas of the western U.S., thousands of people this past week were evacuated from the coast of southern Spain due to some of the worst wildfires in the region in more than a century.

Approximately 4,000 people were evacuated at the end of August in the town of Ojen and another 2,000 persons were forced out of their homes in the wealthy Costa del Sol resort city of Marbella.

This number included at least 300 British and 200 American expatriates that have retired to southern Spain in recent years.

Marbella, studded with luxurious villas, is widely-known as a primary destination for the rich and famous.

NORTH IDAHO WEATHER REVIEW AND LONG-RANGE OUTLOOKS

The big weather question remains unanswered. Just when are we going to see some much-needed rains across the Inland Northwest, including North Idaho? We've seen clouds and strong winds like those which occurred Wednesday night lately in town, but not even a drop of rain.

During the past seven weeks since July 20, as of this bone-dry Thursday, Sept. 6 writing, we residents of Coeur d'Alene and the surrounding areas of the Inland Empire have actually been drier than many parts of the Sahara Desert in North Africa. Only rainless Seattle has seen less measurable moisture in the past 49 days and counting, an almost unbelievable weather event.

Ironically, the current record dry spell, which has been even drier than during the same period in 1934, .23 inches in 2012 compared with .27 inches in 1934, came directly on the soggy heels of the wettest spring and early summer seasons since at least 1895. By the time the almost incessant rains finally ended on July 20, our station on Player Drive in the northwestern corner of Coeur d'Alene, had already picked up a whopping 29.02 inches of precipitation since Jan. 1, compared with the normal rainfall for an entire year in town since at least 1895 of 26.77 inches. We were 'on track' to easily top our all-time record Coeur d'Alene precipitation mark of 38.77 inches set back in the lowland flood year of 1996.

Our annual rainfall total as of this Sept. 6 writing stood at 29.32 inches, still more than 13 inches above the normal year-to-date precipitation total of 16.31 inches, this despite being practically rainless for the past seven weeks in town.

If we do start seeing some measurable rainfall later in the upcoming 10-day period ending Sept. 20, as some computer models suggest, we could still top 1996 for total precipitation even with just normal rainfall during the second half of September, October, November and December. Anything is possible in this never-ending cycle of Wide Weather 'Extremes,' but, once again, only time will tell.

Cliff Harris is a climatologist who writes a weekly column for The Press. His opinions are his own. Email sfharris@roadrunner.com