SEATTLE -- A stretch of dry weather that includes the driest summer so far in at least six decades is ending.

Light rain was spreading southward across the central Puget Sound by late afternoon Monday, said KIRO 7 Chief Meteorologist Rebecca Stevenson.

Rain Tuesday morning will change to showers in the afternoon, Stevenson said.

"We do expect a soggy morning commute," she said.

As of Monday, Seattle had gone without measurable precipitation since July 13. The official National Weather Service measuring station is at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport so the .02 inches recorded Sunday at the agency's forecast office at Sand Point in the city's north end didn't count.

While the 27-day dry spell ranks a mere 23rd in the more than six decades since records have been kept at the airport, the June 1-Aug. 9 total of .24 inches of rain is the lowest on record, less than one-tenth of the normal 2.53 inches, said Jeff Michalski, an NWS meteorologist.

The longest dry spell was 51 days set in 1951.

Across the rest of western Washington state, Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands had received .29 inches of rain from June 1 to midday Monday; Quillayute in the coastal rain forest had gotten .28; Bellingham near the Canadian border had .25; the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station had .16; and Port Angeles on the northern Olympic Peninsula had .13.

The most rain that fell Sunday was .12 inches in Quillayute.

Eleven days after an all-time record high of 103 in Seattle, there was a marked decrease in noontime visitors Monday at Myrtle Edwards Park along the waterfront and the adjoining Seattle Art Museum sculpture garden.

Temperatures were in the mid-60s and lowering clouds first obscured then covered the Olympic Mountains across Puget Sound.

"It stinks ... we get a lot of cloudy days in Rochester, too," laughed Pete Weinstein, visiting with his wife Gail from the New York city. "We heard that the weather had been pretty nice after it got up to 103."

Many didn't mind the wet forecast.

"We need more rain," said Felix Penn, 38, a chef who was out for a walk with his wife Sarah and their Boston bulldog.

"I don't like it when it's really hot," added Penn, who moved north from California about six years ago. "I find the sun is hotter here than it is in the (San Francisco) Bay area."