By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
Bob Williams has been measuring the rain for decades, starting when he lived in Napa, Calif. and continuing after moving farther south to Carlsbad.
“I started just out of curiosity,” said Williams, a former high school special needs teacher and California State Hospital employee with a longtime interest in nature and science.
But he’s not seen rain like Oregon’s since moving in 2018 to five acres along the upper Yachats River. Williams is still measuring rain every day via a manual gauge he checks each morning around 10 o’clock.
What he and other YachatsNews weather watchers recorded this year was a prodigious amount of rain — one of the wettest in years.
Williams, whose home sits at an elevation of 175 feet eight miles up the Yachats River, measured 135.22 inches of rain in 2024 – that’s 11¼ feet, easily eclipsing his most the past five years.
“Here, I’m just amazed with the rain,” Williams said. “Plus, I can see what else it relates to. It’s been a great year for mushrooms, for example. We’re still picking them.”
It was rainfall the first three months of 2024 that sent the year headed toward its record or near-record totals. For the first three months of last year, for example, Williams recorded 65.90 inches of rain – almost half of his full year’s total.
There’s always more rain in the foothills of the Coast Range, of course, as clouds collide with the mountains and the rising elevations squeeze out more and more moisture from them.
The difference is noticeable – even in the Yachats River valley. At the three-mile mark of Yachats River Road, Jim Adler recorded 109.99 inches of rain in 2024 – 20 percent less than Williams’ total just five miles farther upriver.
Adler’s measurement included a very average 14.72 inches in December. Still, it was the third wettest year in Adler’s 16 years of record keeping – just below his totals in 2017 and 2012.
The difference between rainfall amounts near the coast and farther inland are also stark.
At the city of Yachats’ wastewater treatment plant, staff measured 81.79 inches of rain in 2024, 15 inches more than 2023 year and 12 inches more than the city’s 10-year average. And that’s after the 9.65 inches measured in December, the second lowest for that month in the last five years, said treatment plant supervisor David Buckwald.
The difference between rainfall at the city’s wastewater treatment plant in downtown Yachats and Williams’ measurement eight miles east is 65 percent.
Adam Altson, who lives along Ocean View Drive in Yachats, recorded 9.55 inches of rain in December to make a total of 79.43 inches for all of 2024 – a little above his seven-year average.
Julie Bailey, who lives at the 200-foot level of Horizon Hill, recorded 11.37 inches of rain in December for a 2024 total of 95.46 inches – 17 percent more than the amount that the city or Altson measured. Bailey’s total 2023 rainfall was 77.18 inches.
Two miles north of Yachats, longtime weather watcher Don Tucker recorded 11.47 inches of rain in December giving him 95.51 inches for all of 2024 and the highest total in his 18 years of record-keeping. Tucker’s previous high was 95.40 inches in 2017.
Other 2024 observations from YachatsNews’ weather watchers:
- Tucker recorded rain on 226 of last year’s 365 days – or 62 percent of the time. Over Tucker’s 18 years of record keeping, the average is 227 days.
- Decembers can be comparatively warm, Altson said. Five months last year — January, February, March, April and November — were colder than December 2024. “The same was true for 2023 as well,” he said. “And in 2021, those five months as well as May were all colder than December 2021.”
- In 2024 Altson recorded seven days with a temperature at 70 or above – roughly his average. It was his first year since 2015 that he did not record a temperature of 80 degrees or more.
When I first moved here you could almost guarantee that it would start raining the first day of October and hardly ever quit until July. If we were lucky we had two good months of sun. Climate change anyone?
Agreed. Yachats News never looks at long term trends in rainfall, just compares a few recent years. Ignores the moving baseline.
Yep. I grew up here and I’m 61. There have been many years of ongoing torrential rains and storms. When I was younger the storms seemed even more severe.