Hello June, how about some rain?

June the last month of spring and the herald of summer. It's here, it's live, it's right now. But the elephant in the room cannot be ignored. My rain bucket and every other rain gauge in the Portland Metro Area was bone dry last month. It was dry even by JULY standards! I measured a sparse 0.12 inches of precipitation all in scattered shower form. My 16 year average for May is 3.25 inches. Holy Arizona Batman, we're turning into a desert! Well this is the driest May in some 80 years. But the real story isn't just the anomalous May, but this whole year is well under average precipitation. Since the start of the year, I have accumulated 12.62 inches of precipitation including the water content of nearly 9 inches of snowfall. That is on HALF of the established normal for the first five months of the year. I am actually hoping for a soggy June. I didn't want to say the "D" word yet, but if June doesn't produce some above average rainfall, drought isn't far off.

I had 22 sunny or mostly sunny days, just ONE day with any "real" rain, the 10th had 0.07 inches, light showers at worst. We really need some rain my friends, and that is not something we generally have to ask for in these parts.

So was May filled with warm and hot days to compliment the desert dry conditions? Well... not really. There was the warmest day of the year thus far on May 14th when the merc popped out an 87.1° which was one of four 80 plus days. Nary a 90 in sight however. Both the average low and high temp came in about 3 degrees warmer than my 16 year average for May at 50.75° and 71.61° respectively. That is "warm" but there was no major heatwave or extended period of super warm temps. Other than the lack of water falling from the sky and the generally sunny conditions, this was a typical May with some cool days, some average days, and a few really warm days. I think the 3 degree pop was likely due to the outrageous amount of solar warming we got. May is typically a cloudy month with a couple of sunny days, this last month was Southern California sunny. It isn't much of a stretch to say that sunny days tend to warm up more than cloudy ones in late spring.

The warmest overnight low came in on the 24th with a July like low of 57° and the chilliest afternoon was May Day with a nippy 57.9° high. There was really only one morning that was genuinely chilly for late spring, May 2nd barely stayed out of the 30s with a 40.1° low reading. The last 30 days of the month all had no problem getting into the 60s. Nearly half of the month managed to stay above 50° all day and night.

So the outlook for June and Portland's Rose Festival seems to look good with mostly warm and dry conditions. I wouldn't count out a soaking rain sometime in June. We have a reputation to uphold here, and we need to temper the flow of Californians moving to region with some 'disturbing' late spring rainfall ;)