Rain meters or liquid sunshine gauge. are a favorite in Ketchikan. They call themselves the rain capital of the world, but also the salmon capital of the world and The First City of Alaska.
I suppose when you are a weather forecast guru you can always hedge your bets by calling it partly cloudy or partly sunny or overcast with a chance of showers. That way you are nearly always right. So we were expecting a chance of showers and what we got in the morning was fog and a steady drizzle and that lasted to the early afternoon. Then the clouds pulled away and the sun was brightly shining in Ketchikan. There was a chance of showers and we got the constant drizzle in the morning so I suppose the weather forecast was right. In the past the weather prediction was nearly always rain or a variation of it as it did nearly always rain in Ketchikan. 332 days of the year in the 1980’s. So if you then predict rain, you do not have more than a 10% chance of being wrong. And that is not bad in the Art of Meteorology. But we have seen more and more days of sun in Alaska and that includes Ketchikan. Thus now the weather is not as predictable as it used to be and thus we had overcast with showers for today and I had to get my sunglasses out and sun block 35 to protect my brain cover. But on the other hand in August 2017 they had the highest recorded monthly rain fall since 1967 and those aberrations do not make weather predicting any easier. But the locals say on average it now does rain less. Continue reading
