2023 Barely Cracked the Top 10 Rainiest Portland, Maine, Summers

It’s going to be hard not to look back on the summer of 2023 as the summer that Mainers got robbed of the short window of beach days and warm temps… or is it?

According to the National Weather Service, it was a bit surprising to see that 2023 only ranked as the #7 rainiest summer in Portland.

Granted, the National Weather Service has been keeping data since 1871, but it was surprising to hear that three summers since 2009 delivered even more rainfall than 2023, because if you’re like me, you don’t remember.

Will this drenching summer be a distant memory in the next two to three years? Quite possibly.

For example, the National Weather Service states that 2014 soaked us with almost 19 inches. 2009, not all that long ago, was the rainiest on record, with over 22 inches of rain.

Do you recall? I don’t.

Check out this great ranking of top 10 wettest and driest years in Portland, Maine, from the weather service below:

Luckily, we were spared with some decent weather in the second half of July and a fair amount of August, but with Mainers craving sunshine for that length of time, it feels like summer just started, because it kind of did… in the middle of July.

However, if you want to look at the bright side, there are other parts of the country and the world that have been getting hit with natural disasters destroying homes, businesses, and taking lives, and it appears to be happening more often.

There is no crystal ball to predict the future, but more often than not, we are usually hit with the remnants of hurricanes and major storms here in northern New England, continuing to make it a safer place to live.