By Doug Fletcher,Staff Writer

There’s a good chance that by the time you read this, the state will have a new rainfall record.

As of Thursday afternoon, the 2005 rainfall total at the Portland Jetport was about a half-inch off the all-time record of 66.33 inches set in 1983. (The figure includes rainfall and melted snowfall.)

“Radar indicates we’ll make a good run at that today,” said a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Gray office shortly before 3 p.m. Thursday. In fact, immediately after that, the office issued a flood statement noting that a total of between 1 and 1.5 inches of rain was expected across central, western and southern Maine by this morning.

That doesn’t mean 2005 in Maine was gloomier than usual, however.

Meteorologist Jim Hayes said that so far this year we’ve had 179 “mostly sunny” days. In a typical year Maine has 120 “mostly sunny” days, Hayes said.

Flip the coin and there have been 89 cloudy days. The norm: 100.

Hayes said there were another 96 days that fall under the “partly cloudy” category.

May and October were particularly gloomy this year. In fact October, with more than 14.25 inches of rain that month alone, went into the record books as the second- wettest October ever.

By contrast, July and August were particularly bright and sunny.

The average annual precipitation for Portland is 45.83 inches.

The British Broadcasting Corp.’s world weather section says Portland, Maine, has between 10 and 13 days of rain each month. March is the wettest month with 13 rainy days; September and October tend to nicer, with 10 rainy days each.

Of course that wasn’t the case this past October.

The BBC says average hours of sunlight in Portland run from a low of 5 hours a day in January, November and December to 10 hours of sunlight in June and July.