Seattle weather: A week of rain follows record dry October

October is turning rainy right at the end of the month, like it’s scrounging together a last-minute Halloween costume.

Otherwise tasked with ushering us into fall with thematic cozy weather that makes you shut in with a warm blanket, the 10th month has instead been one of the driest Octobers on record with weather often more reminiscent of summer. 

Only last weekend did October begin to show the overcast and ominous aura you might expect. And turns out, the rain was just procrastinating, because we’re about to see showers in some form every day of the week. 

The system that brought us some steady moisture Sunday will be wrapping up its reign over the city Monday morning with showers “here and there,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Reedy, but it won’t amount to more than a few hundredths of an inch. 

Then, we’ll take a deep breath Monday night before the next system swings in Tuesday with about a tenth of an inch of rain that will last us into Wednesday, Reedy said Monday morning.

We’ll get another system Wednesday afternoon or evening, nipping at the heels of the last, Reedy said, and that stretch of moody weather will linger over Seattle into the weekend. 

Wednesday to Thursday may see another tenth of an inch, but Friday to Saturday will see about a hundredth before things start to dry out the evening of Halloween, conveniently, so that you won’t have to make last-minute rainproofing edits to that costume you planned out so well.

High temperatures will stick around the mid to low 50s throughout the week, but the overnight lows will drop from the lower to mid 40s Wednesday into the high 30s later in the week, Reedy said, in a “signal that things are starting to cool down.”

And should you need another sign of the times, look no further than Monday being the last 6 p.m. sunset of the year, or the annual closing of the road to Artist Point announced Sunday by the Washington State Department of Transportation. The last 2.7 miles of Highway 542, or Mount Baker Highway, is closed for the winter.