Only four-hundredths of an inch of rain fell Thursday, but that was enough to clinch an all-time record for wet summers in Haines.

Between June 1 and Aug. 31, 16.31 inches of rain fell at the Haines airport, site of the Chilkat Valley’s oldest weather station, with records dating to 1940. The summer’s total eclipses a record for rain set during the same months in 1956 – 15.93 inches.

According to the National Weather Service, 5.86 inches is normal rainfall for June 1 through Aug. 31 in Haines. This year, 5.18 inches fell in August, 6.59 fell in July and 4.54 inches came in June. May was comparatively parched at just 1.33 inches.

The effect of all that rain?

For some, it’s adios, Haines. Jessie Miller, who has spent summers here since 2009, said she was considering sticking around for her first winter this year, but the weather changed her mind. “I just feel like I cannot have a Haines winter after the extended fall we just experienced. I love it here. It’s beautiful, but I feel winter would just be brutal – for a lot of people – after our summer. I’m looking forward to a California winter.”

The rain also put a damper on plans to hold Senior Center lunches outside once a week. “That was the plan,” said site manager Cindy Jackson. Rain and cool weather limited picnic lunches at the center to just two – one in May and another Aug. 21.

“My thinking was that summers here are so short. We wanted to take advantage of them as much as we can, to enjoy the sunshine and the weather. I grew up in the South and we ate outside every chance we could… We’ll shoot for more days outside (next summer),” Jackson said.

The rain made a summer of weddings maybe a bit more memorable.

One of several friends married on the same date assured Melina Shields that it never rains here on Aug. 9, when she and fiancé Tim Hockin planned their outdoor wedding across Mud Bay. The forecast said otherwise. “I said it would be fine. Tim said, ‘Tarps.’” Hockin and some friends strung a giant tarp over the reception area, then another over a seating area for the ceremony.

Rain on Aug. 9 totaled .97 inches. “I have to credit Tim with the tarps… We took them down in a monsoon two days later. It was pouring even more rain,” Shields said.

Bad weather wasn’t bad for everyone. Bar and restaurant owner Christy Tengs Fowler said her father told her years ago that rain was good for business. That equation seemed to play out this summer, she said. “We had a really good summer. Maybe that had something to do with it. It did seem like there were more people inside.”

Also, enduring all that summer rain might be seen as training for fall in Southeast Alaska – typically the wettest time of year here. For September, normal rainfall is 6.23 inches, and for October, normal rainfall is 7.98 inches.

Last year, 4.37 inches of rain came between June 1 and Aug. 31.