Just an hour back I noticed something strange; the windows were actually appearing ‘bright’ and when I peeked outside I could see shadows! A look upward gave me the reason; the sun was actually visible!! I was quite pleased to see it once again and for me that’s unusual as I favor cloudy, cool weather. But this has been a very wet August to this point in semi-rural south central Alaska. This is Monday, August 15th and it has rained every day this month accumulating 4.18” as of 07:00 this morning. While August is our wettest month the average monthly rainfall is 4.5” which means we’re already at 92.9% of said monthly average yet we are just 48.4% of the way into the month.
Here are some signs of a wet August and the coming fall:
Some already yellow birch leaves floating atop a couple of dying mushrooms
Typical ‘shroom for this area with a non-typical shadow!
Female Spruce Grouse on Easy Barge Drive; when they begin to appear you know summer is winding down
Not sure what the plants are but when the leaves begin to turn brilliant red fall is not too far distant
Very wet boreal forest; the shimmering effect on the plants is due to being coated with rain drops
Alaskan at Last! 
You are so fortunate to have that cooler (and now at least dryer) weather. I am quite sure the leaves are indeed falling at my old haunt and the Grouse are foraging for gravel in my drive. Enjoy the transition into the wonderful fall weather.
We had a gorgeous day Monday; the overcast that’s been solidly in place for the last 22 days disintegrated and we has mostly sunny to partly cloudy conditions although a brief early evening shower did produce 0.01″ of rain and hence kept our stretch of ‘days with rain’ ongoing at 25 total. There are Spruce Grouse everywhere; I really do not care for their penchant to wait until you are literally on top of them before they burst into flight! A couple damn near gave me a grabber when doing so. The fireweed blooms are dying and dropping off now and the birds I feed (Chickadees, Red Bellied Woodpeckers and similar) have returned to the feeders in force but they are secreting away most of the black oilers they grab in the tree bark for winter consumption. Given how the recent falls have run we could still see some warm weather but with the daylight finally dropping to a bit less than two thirds of our days one can see lots of ‘impending fall’ activities all around this beautiful environment. Early September can produce some of the best weather of the year; here’s hoping..!