Ever since May’s dry weather, Marianne Atkinson and I have kept up a lively email conversation about drought and rain in our respective hometowns, Dubois and Pittsburgh.
Dubois has been short-changed on rainfall this year despite June’s excessive wet weather. Most months have been so dry that June’s 3.36″ above normal could not overcome the drought.
Even their “good” rainfall statistics are misleading because most of it falls in a single heavy downpour event. As of today, Dubois received 1.3 inches of rain in August but 98% of it fell in one 24 hour period — August 10-11.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Climatologists predict that as the climate heats up western Pennsylvania’s weather will change from gentle rains to frequent heavy downpours.
Meanwhile Marianne watches the weather radar closely. When rain is predicted will her garden get any of it? No. As the storm clouds approach they usually part north and south, missing Dubois completely. She sent me this screenshot of a recent “rainy” day from Accuweather.
I’ve seen this phenomenon, too. On Monday night Pittsburgh got a trace while Youngstown and West Virginia were slammed.
Is your town suffering from localized drought? Have you noticed this parting-of-the-clouds phenomenon?
It reminds me of Arizona’s monsoon.
(photo by Kate St. John)
Yes, the screen shot is from Accuweather. I have seen the parting of the rain right before it gets to DuBois MANY times! The other phenomenon is that some nice heavy rain is heading DIRECTLY towards DuBois and dissipates right before it reaches us. The rest of the state may be getting rain, but DuBois is short-changed more often than not.
We used to live in a region in Ohio that frequently experienced this. Places north and south of us would get rain as we went dry. I was told it had something to do with our watershed. I’m not sure what that means.
One solution to the problem, which is evidently not going to go away: I have rainbarrels that connect to my gutter downspouts. One 1500 gallon one in the back and two 350 gallon ones under my porch. That’s enough to take my yard, all of which is hosta, fern and native wildflowers (under the trees) through one month of no rain. One August a single really heavy rainstorm filled up the 1500 gallon one!
It does sound a lot like the monsoon season of Arizona. We have been lucky this year – according to my rain gauge, we have received 3.5″ since monsoon officially started on June 15, which is slightly above normal so far.
Rain was ALL around us… it was over 3 weeks since a good rain…2 600 gallon cisterns(rain barrels are too small) were down to less than 9 inches(sloped edges). still have 5 garbage cans filled, but amazing how quick the water goes down…one above ground cistern is used for hand watering plants with saucers underneath and the other is underground and fills the ponds…thanks to the 8/10s of an inch of rain, the underground is almost full (more gutters going in it) and the other is about 1/2 full now…bonus I didn’t have to water or fill the ponds for a few more days….when you have well water, you know how precious water is…so glad to see the rain…so was the garden and other plants since they are on their own when planted…that is why the gardens are (mostly) natives plants or plants that have adapted to the seasons of no rain…