Rain by metro: average annual precipitation in 40 metros

Rain doesn't cancel a training week. It moves one part of it: the walk you meant to take outside. How often that happens depends on where you live, and NOAA measures the part that can be measured: its 1991–2020 climate normals give, for each weather station, the average precipitation in a year.¹

The table takes one station for each of the 40 metro areas that have a page on this site: a station within 25 km of the Census Bureau's internal point for the metro's first-named city, preferring one with a complete record. That makes each row a reading at one spot near that city, not a metro average, so the station's name and distance are printed with it. San Jose has no figure, for the reason given in its row.

The table

Precipitation is the average total for a year over 1991 to 2020, in inches: rain, plus snow and ice counted as the water they melt to. The distance is from the city's Census point to the station. A dagger (†) marks a value from a partial record, explained under the table. Each metro links to its page on this site.

Download this table (CSV). Free to reuse with a link back to this page.

† Partial record: NOAA flags these values R (representative) instead of S (standard), with fewer years of record behind them: Riverside–San Bernardino (Riverside Fire Stn 3) 21 years, San Antonio–New Braunfels (San Antonio Incarnate Word) 18. San Jose has no figure. The selection rule prefers a station with a complete record, and within 25 km the only one was Mt Hamilton, 1,282 m up, which describes a mountain, not the valley where the city is. So San Jose's climate figures were left out rather than printed from that station or swapped for another one by hand.

What stands out

• Miami is the wettest of the 39 stations, by a wide margin. Miami International Airport averages 67.4 inches a year, 10.8 more than the next, Birmingham Airport (56.6).
• The wet end is the South. Eight stations average more than 50 inches a year: Miami, Birmingham, Houston (55.6), Memphis (54.9), Jacksonville (53.4), Orlando (51.5), Nashville (50.5) and Atlanta (50.4).
• The dry end is the West. Six stations average under 20 inches, all in the West: Phoenix (7.2, the driest), Riverside–San Bernardino (10.0, a partial record), Denver (15.4), Salt Lake City (15.5), Los Angeles (17.7, at the UCLA station) and Sacramento (19.2). No station in the table falls between Sacramento's 19.2 and Minneapolis–St. Paul's 32.7, and Miami's station gets more than nine times as much as Phoenix's.
• A state isn't one climate. In Texas, Houston's Hobby Airport station averages 55.6 inches, about 19 more than Austin's Camp Mabry station (36.3) and more than San Antonio's Incarnate Word station (34.0, a partial record). In Florida, Miami's 67.4 is nearly 18 inches more than Tampa's 49.5.
• Amount isn't frequency. Portland's airport station averages 36.9 inches, about the same as Austin (36.3) and Oklahoma City (36.4). The column says how much water falls in a year, not on how many days: a few heavy downpours and a long run of drizzly days can add up to the same total.

How to read your own station's row

Read the number as a year, not a week. A normal is a 30-year average: any given year runs wetter or drier, and the rain is measured at the station, not at your door. The total also doesn't say when the rain falls. A city can get most of it in one season or spread it across the year, and this column looks the same either way.

The middle of the table is Washington's Reagan Airport station at 41.8 inches: half the 39 stations get that much or less. What the number is good for is deciding whether your week needs a wet-day version. If your station sits near the top, rain is part of a normal week and your plan should already say where the walk goes when it comes. If it sits near the bottom, rain is the exception, and the plan can treat it as one.

What rain changes in a training week

• The walk moves; it doesn't disappear. On a wet day, take the steps under cover or indoors: a treadmill, a mall, a big store, an indoor track, the stairs in your building. A treadmill walk or ten minutes of stairs counts the same as a loop around the block. Same daily target, different place.
• Lifting doesn't change. If you lift indoors, a rainy week is the same week: same days, same sessions, same progression. Rain is a reason to move the walk, not to skip the gym.
• Decide the wet-day version before it rains. Pick the indoor walk now, the place and the hour, so when the rain shows up there's nothing left to decide and nothing to talk yourself out of.
• Make the trip easy. If getting to the gym is the hard part on a wet day, keep the bag packed and go straight from work, or train at home with a three-day dumbbell plan when the trip isn't happening.
• Keep a floor. A 30-minute session keeps a soaked week from going to zero, and never missing twice holds in a wet month too.

Related tables: commute times by metro for these same 40 metros, how active your city is by the CDC's city estimates, and winter cold and summer heat at weather stations in 48 big metros.

Where the numbers come from

NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information publish the U.S. Climate Normals for 1991 to 2020. The precipitation figure is the annual normal from the Annual/Seasonal Climate Normals,¹ read from each station's own normals file with NOAA's completeness flag and years of record, and rounded to one decimal. The values were requested on October 22, 2026, and checked the same day by a second, independent re-fetch: every value, flag and year count matched.

How the station was chosen: for each metro, up to six stations within 25 km of the Census Bureau's internal point for the first-named principal city were considered, preferring one with standard flags on every value; the distance in the table is from that point. A station describes its own spot, and normals apply less well the farther you are from the station.

If you reuse the table, cite NOAA: Palecki, M., Durre, I., Applequist, S., Arguez, A., Lawrimore, J. (2021). U.S. Climate Normals 2020: U.S. Annual/Seasonal Climate Normals (1991-2020). NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. A link back here is appreciated.

If you want a week that already knows what to do when it rains where you live, apply.