Welcome to...summer?

Yesterday, this was the headline of the news. "Welcome to...summer?" And it's what EVERYONE was talking about here. HA, it's summer. Yeah right. Like I SAID, I am vetoing Washington and it's stupid weather. Not really sure what that veto thing means but essentially I am over this weather and absolutely despise it. It is seriously depressing to see red hot temperatures across the country and then cold/rainy temperatures in our little corner of the world. But, some people love it, I guess. I am just a sunny, warm weather girl at heart so I am MISERABLE. A few highlights from the first day of "summer" in Seattle as well as a link to the news story:

From KOMO 4 news (link below):
So let's recap just how gloomy it's been, so we can brag to the grandchildren someday....

-If you haven't heard, this is now the longest stretch (by far) that we've gone into a new year without hitting 75 degrees. The old record was June 9th, set in 1991.

-This is also the longest streak of consecutive days without hitting 75. Monday makes Day 271. (TWO SEVENTY ONE...that's ALMOST A FULL YEAR! And seriously, only 3 months of weather in the 70s? Um, yuck.) The old record was 253, done twice (Sept. 28, 1990-June 9, 1991, and Sept. 22, 1999 - June 3, 2000.)

-Through June 20, the average high temperature from May and June combined is 62.0 degrees. If that holds, it would be a record as the coldest May-June is 62.49 degrees set in 1953. Just taking June into account, the average high temperature is 63.8 degrees would be third-coldest behind 1971 (62.73) and 1953 (63.27)

-On June 15th, the weather at 18,000 feet was colder over Washington than any other place on the North American continent -- including sites within the Arctic Circle! (Oh, that's just LOVELY).

-Going hand-in-hand with the chilly weather has been persistent rain.
The 5.32" of rain since May 1 makes this the third wettest May-June on record -- with more rain in the forecast before the month's end. The record is 6.19" in 1984, and second place is just ahead at 5.34", set in 1993. And the rain has been spread out across several days. We already tied one record for consecutive days with rain in the dry season (May-Sept.) with 11 in a row from May 25-June 4. And perhaps lost in the shuffle is a second 8-day streak from the 16th to the 23rd leading up to it that itself ties for fourth-longest. But put it all together, and in the 30 days between May 16 and June 14, it rained on 25 of them, with our only dry days coming on May 24 and June 5. That is completely unheard of for this time of year -- and a wet stretch like that is actually not all that common during the rainy season either. You have to go back to January of 2006 which had 28 of 31 days with rain to find a wetter streak. Overall, we've had 35 days with rain of the 51 days through June 20. (Are you freaking kidding me? I mean, I've lived through it but WOW, that SUCKS).

...And a few more golden nuggets from the full story....

-This weekend was among the longest -- and darkest days of the year! While Sunday was nearly the longest day of the year in terms of length of daylight (16 hours, exactly, for Seattle), it was the darkest June day in at least the past 15 years when it came to amount of sunlight energy reaching the surface, according to research done by UW meteorologist Mark Albright.

-So far in June, 18 days out of 20 have featured 70% cloud cover or more during the day, with nine of those days at 90-100% cloud cover. Seattle at least averages 5 sunny days in June. So far, just one... (SEE YOU GUYS, I DON'T EXAGGERATE)

And a link to the full story:
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/96822259.html

In honor of the first day of summer, I made a piping hot pot of minestrone soup including: sauteed mushrooms, spinach, beans, veggies, and of course some red hot chili peppers. Not really ideal "summer" food but I was freezing...