Please, DON'T Come Again Another Day

Almost Twice as Much Rain as Normal Left by This Month's Storms

Will it ever end?

Yet again, the skies darkened yesterday and summer afternoon thunderstorms drenched the Washington region. Those hoping for a respite are out of luck. The soggy, Seattle-like weather is set to continue at least through the weekend.

There is a 40 percent chance of storms today, a 50 percent chance tomorrow and a 20 percent chance Sunday. This month, 5.07 inches of rain have fallen over the D.C. area. The average for June is 3.13.

"We're almost double the average, and we're only halfway through the month," said Jason Samenow, chief meteorologist for washingtonpost.com's Capital Weather Gang. But the region is still well short of the record: 14.02 inches in June 2006.

Although skies had mostly cleared by late afternoon, for some, yesterday was just one rainy day too many.

Jessica Rives, who lives and works in Old Town Alexandria, was carrying her umbrella and wearing rain boots in anticipation of another torrential downpour. She always checks the forecast and is prepared for the weather.

"If there's any possible chance of rain, I like to be prepared," said Rives, 26, who works at a bank. "I don't want to be that person and look like a wet dog walking home."

She has had to wear the boots -- knee-high, pink and covered in tiny bulldogs -- several days a week for each of the past three weeks. But she said they do come in handy, like last week, when she was caught in a downpour.

"I've lived in Alexandria my whole life, and it's never been this weird," she said of the weather. "I'm sick of it. I want it to go away."

So do people in Southern Maryland, where yesterday's storm hit hardest, according to Samenow.

Lt. Elizabeth Campbell, a spokeswoman for Charles County Emergency Medical Services, who lives near California, Md., said the rain has gotten so bad lately that she has started calling the 30-foot sailboat stored in her driveway "my ark."

"Forty days and forty nights, that's what we said," Campbell joked. "We did something wrong, because it's been raining forty days and forty nights."