It's the new Labor Day Tradition around Seattle: Celebrate Bumbershoot, get in those last second Back to School deals, and complain about how lousy the summer weather has been :)

Between last year and this year, it's been a very vocal topic when it comes to the weather: "Man, this summer has been dismal!"

I wrote a story last year documenting that the summer of 2007 wasn't too far off of normal, it just felt cool compared to recent sunny and warmer summers.

Then came this year, which began with the coldest start to June ever.  July was pretty nice and were doing OK into mid-August before the cool rains returned.

But has this summer really been that bad?

Hoping to answer the question once and for all, and to have something to gauge future summers, I've put together what I'm tentatively calling the "Summer Sanity Index" although I am open to suggestions for a better name. (Submit yours in the commenting fields below.)

I went back all the way to 1948 and then for each year, compiled the average high temperature between June 1 and August 31 -- the basic time of summer vacations. (Not counting September since kids are back in school and summer is for all intents and purposes over, even though technically it has three weeks left.) I then rated them on a scale of 0 to 100 -- 50 being an average summer for temperature, 0 being the coldest on record, and 100 being the warmest on record.

To balance this a bit, I then did the same for number of days in that period we had measurable rain -- figuring that is a better gauge than just using aggregate rainfall totals since that could get skewed by a big storm.

(For example, if you had one day of heavy rain but 29 days of sunshine, people would generally accept that is a nicer summer than to have 10 days of lighter rain that added up to less.)

And again, I ranked each year based on 50 being normal, 100 being the least rainy and 0 being the most frequently rainy.  I then averaged the rain and temperature scores together for a final score.

(I wanted to also use number of cloudy days vs. average, but that data is very difficult to find earlier than the mid 1990s -- it's all hard copy buried in some warehouse in D.C.)

So what did I find?

Our recent summers have nothing on 1954, which rates by far the "worst" summer ever. (Yes, I know rain fans, this would be the "best" by your standards, but for ease of writing, we'll go with sunny and warm being what's expected in summer.)  That year was the coldest summer -- with just an average high temperature of 66.23 degrees through the summer. It was also the most frequently rainy with rain on 32 of the 92 days.  It gets a Summer Sanity Index of "0".

The best summer? 1967.  That was the third warmest summer on record -- 77.48 degrees and good for "99" on the index, and just behind the 77.62 degree summer of 1961. But 1967 was the driest with just 6 rainy days that summer to give it a near perfect Summer Sanity Index of 99.5.

So what about this summer? It was just a little below average, scoring 45.5 on the Index. The average temperature was 72.09 degrees, good for a score of 45 compared to the "50" score of 72.60.  We had 20 rainy days, just over the '50' score of 19 average rainy days.

And believe it or not, this past summer actually rated a little worse than 2007, which finished with a score of 46.5. (62 on temperature, but only a 31 on rain).  The 2006 summer, which everyone remembers for being sunny and warm, rated very well, scoring a 70 -- the 10th highest score.

Here is the complete chart:

Year	Avg Temp Score	# Rainy Days Score	Final Score
1967	99	100	99.5
1958	99	77	88
1961	100	69	84.5
2003	84	77	80.5
1987	76	81	78.5
1951	67	85	76
1992	90	62	76
1996	75	73	74
1977	82	65	73.5
2006	75	65	70
1985	77	62	69.5
1965	75	62	68.5
1989	64	69	66.5
1986	67	65	66
1994	74	58	66
1991	64	65	64.5
1998	66	62	64
1979	73	54	63.5
1969	63	62	62.5
1974	62	62	62
2004	81	42	61.5
1988	63	58	61.5
1982	55	65	60
1970	63	54	58.5
1978	75	42	58.5
1984	47	69	58
2002	57	58	57.5
1960	56	54	55
1990	76	31	53.5
1995	59	42	50.5
1972	62	35	48.5
2000	43	50	46.5
2007	62	31	46.5
2005	57	35	46
1952	41	50	45.5
2008	45	46	45.5
1959	45	42	43.5
1976	45	42	43.5
1956	36	50	43
1975	54	31	42.5
1950	58	27	42.5
1973	34	46	40
1981	45	35	40
1966	33	46	39.5
1949	55	23	39
1971	44	31	37.5
1968	55	19	37
1997	53	15	34
1962	42	23	32.5
2001	26	31	28.5
1999	27	27	27
1983	33	19	26
1980	33	19	26
1957	20	31	25.5
1993	31	15	23
1948	36	8	22
1953	18	8	13
1955	13	12	12.5
1964	21	0	10.5
1954	0	0	0