Yeah, I just moved here from Seattle, and I was expecting State College to be pretty dry in comparison... it hasn't been so far. (Well, I guess it's still drier here than it is there.)

I moved here from Portland, Oregon, and never heard the end of jokes and comments about how it rains all the time in Oregon. I tell people it only rains 8 month of the year in Oregon. When I worked summers on a Forest Service fire crew we knew how often it rained in the summer and it seldom rained at all. It was not unusual for it to not rain in the summer.

The average annual rainfall in Portlant, OR, is 36".
The average annual rainfall in Seattle, WA, is 34".
They both have Mediterranean climates with 80% of the rain in 6 months centered in winter. Farmers know that if they want to raise a summer crop they need to irrigate.

Conversely, the average annual rainfall here in Reading, PA, is 41".
The rain is spread out over the entire year. The wettest months are in the summer after hurricanes come ashore in the South. It is fairly common for us to get over 2" of rain from these storms. The farmers yell drought if it doesn't rain at least 2" every month. Here in PA, only nurserymen have irrigation. The others take their chances with the weather.

The difference isn't the amount of rain, it is the number of days of rain. Portland and Seattle have many more days with rain, but less annual rainfall.

I raise rhododendrons and the varieties we grow here in PA are quite different from those we grew in Oregon. Here they need to withstand hot wet summers and cold dry winters. Conversely in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, rhododendrons have a warm dry summer and a cool wet winter.

For those that haven't been to the Pacific Northwest, it has three very different climates.
1) the coastal region has rain forests with over 200" of rain,
2) the valley between the Coast Range and the Cascade Mountains is the temperate Mediterranian climate and
3) East of the Cascades in arid.

Today was the worst. I've never seen a flash flood before. It rained so hard from noon to 1:00. By 1:30 we were missing abt 10 feet of driveway and the road was under water as far as I could see. Even the garden has changed shape. Strawberry plants are sticking up on little hills and the soil around them washed away. The water was pretty much back in the creek by evening.
I wonder what tomorrow will bring...

The roads were pretty bad on my commute home last night. Lots of ponding and standing water. I hope the rivers don't flood.

Lots of washouts around here too, a couple missing bridges and closed roads. I had a few gullies open up in the yard, I guess I'll have to rethink where the water is going and figure out how I can keep it under control. This probably sounds odd, but I want the water to soak into MY garden and not just put it into a drain and send it off into the street (am I greedy and selfish?)

Sorry to hear about the damage in other parts of the state. It's been a busy year for heavy rains.

I think we should all take a field trip out to the west coast to experience the weather first hand! Sounds like the only thing gained in the move from Seattle to PA is the chance to experience PA's summertime heat and humidity. Hmmmm.