Wacky weather: Stormy in Southwest, sunny in Seattle

SEATTLE - Heavy rains and flooding in the Southwest? A near-record dry streak in Seattle?

The counterintuitive weather is not necessarily unusual for this time of year, but it is striking when compared with the usual opinions about the regions: rain in the Northwest and sunny skies in the Southwest. But late summer is typically the sunniest, driest part of the year in Washington and Oregon, while the Southwest monsoon season stretches into September.

In the Pacific Northwest, bone-dry conditions and lightning have led to large wildfires and left the area ripe for more, particularly in Washington state. A rain shower Sunday night in Seattle dropped the first measurable moisture since July 23 at Sea-Tac Airport, ending a 48-day dry stretch, the second longest on record.

Meanwhile, summer thunderstorms that struck parts of the Southwest this week flooded homes and streets in the Las Vegas area, inundated mobile home parks in Southern California, stranded some Navajo Nation residents in Arizona, and broke a dike in southern Utah, leading to evacuations.

The conditions may be leaving residents reeling, but it's par for the course this time of year, experts say.

FLOODING IN ARIZONA

Arizona has seen much flooding in recent months, with normally dry washes rushing like rivers in parts of the state. Some residents might have the impression that this summer has been extremely wet because of the frequency of rain that they can see from their homes, said J.J. Broston, a science and operations officer for the National Weather Service in Tucson.

But rain falls more diffusely across a region, and this year has been wet but not record-breaking, he said.

"For the most part, people are looking at rainfall from their own individual perspectives, and if it rains at their homes, they think it has been a wet monsoon (season)," Broston said.

Rainfall levels in Arizona in the monsoon season, which runs from June 15 through Sept. 30, have been just above average.

Metro Phoenix and surrounding areas have seen 2.35 inches during the season, up from the average of 1.4 inches but nowhere near the record of 9.56 in 1984, according to the National Weather Service.

In the southern portion of the state, the Tucson International Airport recorded 5.97 inches of rain this season. That is a half inch above the average in the season but pales in comparison to the record of 13.84 inches in 1964.

STORMS IN CALIFORNIA

In Southern California, a thunderstorm settled for six to eight hours over Mecca and Thermal, two towns 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles near the location of the annual Coachella Music Festival. The storm dropped more than the average annual rainfall on parts of the Coachella Valley in one night alone, flooding two mobile home parks.

Meanwhile, drought-striken New Mexico awaited the leftovers from the storms that drenched other Western cities. Meteorologists said an upper-level system moving in from the West was expected to collide with a cold front moving down through the heart of New Mexico.