Image by Flickr user dustinphillips

Two-and-three-quarter inches of rain on December 2nd.

Charleston's December rains wasted no time in getting us all wet. As of the 13th we've had 5.55 inches cast upon us by the angry gods of the sky. That's an amount 440% above the to-date December average of 1.26 inches.

The sky has already set five record events in this young month, including:

• December 3: 2.75 inches at the airport. Bests the old record of 0.7 in 1981.
• December 13th: 1.48 inches at the Waterfront Park in downtown Charleston. Bests 1.37 in 1954.

Are we set for a monthly record? While the next 36 hours could bring half an inch, we've got several sunny days forecast ahead, and we're still very far behind the record rainfall of December in Charleston of 10.56 inches in 1941 (well, thats the recorded record anyways.)

It's still pretty shocking to have this much rain -- if for no other reason than December 2008 set a record of the least rainfall: 0.35 inches.

Don't want to take my word for it? Go digging at the National Weather Service's data for Charleston. Also worth pointing out that this data is preliminary and subject to revision by the Weather Service.

Fun fact: While the weather records for downtown Charleston go further back than those for the general Charleston records, the latter set charts much wetter Decembers. The wettest month for all of Charleston is 11.08 in 1941, while the wettest for downtown is 5.53 in 1976.