Local News

October is going out with a splash as one of the top 10 wettest Octobers ever, the Seattle office of the National Weather Service reports.

As Halloween evening settles in, heavy rain that began falling on Tuesday is just beginning to taper off, changing to showers. While some periods of heavy rain are in the forecast, the steady drenching is over with a drying trend forecast for Thursday.

The Skokomish River crested at flood stage today but is receding this evening. Flood warnings ended as of this evening, and urban and small-stream flood advisories are expected to expire this evening, as the rain continues to abate.

Before the rain tapered off, some cities set records:

SeaTac on Tuesday shattered its daily record for rainfall, with 1.36  inches recorded, breaking the 1997 record of .87 inches.

Hoquiam broke its daily record too, with 2.57 inches of rain falling yesterday, breaking the record of 1.41 inches set in 1981.

While it did not rain for the first 11 days of October, it started raining on the 12^th and there have been only three dry days since, propelling this to the 7^th wettest October on record in Seattle, said Dennis D’Amico, meteorologist at the Seattle office of the National Weather Service.

In all, over the past two days, the mountains of Western Washington got soaked with 3 to 5  inches of rain, and in the lowlands, an inch to 2-1/2 inches fell.