BOSTON -- Seattle may typically get a bad rap for being especially rainy, but Boston had Seattle beat this June with 22 days of at least some rain.

Seattle, on the other hand, had less than half of that, with only 10 days of rain, and five of those had trace amounts that weren't even measurable, according to National Weather Service monthly climate reports.

"We've been in kind of a winter-like pattern, " said Jeremiah Pyle, a NWS meteorologist in Taunton.

Of those 22 days, 20 had light rain, six had normal rain and four had heavy rain, according to NWS's monthly report for Boston. Some days had more than one type of rain.

It might come as a surprise, however, that Boston's total rainfall was about average with 3.22 inches of rain for the whole month, according to NWS reports.

"We're not really that far above normal in precipitation," Pyle said

"We had a lot of days when it rained, but a lot of those days, the precipitation amounts [were] pretty small," he said.

Part of the reason behind our climate swap with West Coast cities like Seattle is a shift in pressure systems, said Kirby Cook, a science and operations officer for the NWS forecast office in Seattle.

High-pressure systems usually result in drier weather, and low-pressure systems usually result in wetter weather, Cook said. These systems typically sit in an alternating pattern over the country, but they appear to have shifted over, throwing Boston and Seattle into opposite pressure systems than usual for this time of year.

"This time of year for you guys, you tend to be dry," Cook said. "Instead of the high pressure you normally have, you've had very persistent low pressure."

Contrary to popular belief, Seattle isn't always wet. In fact, it is fairly dry through the summer months, Johnny Burg, an NWS meteorologist from Seattle, said.

"New York City actually gets more rain than we do," Burg said.

Right now, the weather is a bit ahead of schedule for Seattle, but neither the weather in Boston nor Seattle should cause concern, Cook said.

"It's not unheard of. We've had dry summers here," Cook said. "I think the record period of no rain is toward the end of summer, and it's 51 to 52 days. We're flirting with that right now."

More rainy days come with good and bad consequences, Boston University earth sciences professor Wally Fulweiler said. Although people in Boston don't have to water their lawns as much, pollutants eventually make their way to bodies of water as runoff.

For example, nitrogen, which is found in fertilizer, can cause phytoplankton (a microscopic plant) blooms in water that eventually die and suck up oxygen, killing other water inhabitants. Depending on the situation, this can affect other organisms in the food chain.

"For any organism that’s living there . . . if there's no oxygen, then you can't breath, so you die," Fulweiler said.

Another problem with excess fresh water is stagnation because the freshwater forms a barrier that keeps oxygen near the surface, strangling the water-dwellers below, she said.

With global and national climate change, some areas will become wetter and others will become drier, she said, noting she is not a meteorologist.

"Water will definitely be an issue in future, an issue that will be a top concern," she said.