I have a rain gauge but until recently had not kept track of totals. On July 16 I started entering my daily readings into a simple spreadsheet. These storms are very hit and miss so totals are for my location on South Main Street only. For the second half of July I recorded 10.8 inches. and so far in August have received 5.25 inches. 16.05 inches total in about a week under one month. I don’t think we are dry anymore.
We have experienced many rainy spells like this summer, the past 10 to 15 years. I have lived in the same little house for 33 years and remember many dry Julys and Augusts when the only rain was from quick hitting thunderstorms and the lawn only needed mowing once every two weeks. Not anymore. And on the flip side, when we have a dry spell which does happen, it is very dry, and we don’t even get those late afternoon thunderstorms.
I think our yearly precipitation is up considerably from 20 years ago but do not have the numbers to back that up. I started recording snowfall in 1993 and continue to do so. Average over that time is 65.7 inches. Last winter was slightly above average at 69.5 inches and there were 7 rains storms mixed with the snow. If all snow it could have been the highest total since I have been measuring.
Gary King
Drenched
This seems a bit like the summer of Irene… lots and lots of rain (followed by the big storm.) It also seems quite tropical. We had weather like this in Florida… hot and humid all day, then a big heavy storm would break, then it would start to evaporate and do it again the next day. (Tip: go explore the various types of frozen and refrigerated goods at grocery stores to cool off…)
And yes, hit or miss storms. It can be sunny at our place in the tree/stump streets but pouring in West B, or sunny in Brattleboro but pouring in Putney.
I’ve been watching the humidity levels. It seems like almost every day we get close to 100% at some point….
Windam County Precipitation
You can find precipitation measurements from NOAA for Windham County from July 1901 to July 2018 here:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/county/time-series/VT-025/pcp/all/7/1901-2018?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1948&lastbaseyear=2000
Peak was 14 inches in about 2006. Here’s a zoom in on just the 2000-2018 range:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/county/time-series/VT-025/pcp/all/7/2000-2018?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1948&lastbaseyear=2000
16 inches is generally much higher than any of the readings shown. The peak shown during Irene was about 11.5 inches. Not sure where the actual weather gauges were located for these measurements or how many gauges the readings are averaged across. Airports all tend to have gauges, so you could look for readings from the closest airport (which might be Albany, NY or Manchester, NH, or Bradley in MA.) There’s probably a web site somewhere with shared readings from personal weather stations across the US as well. There can be a lot of local variation due to altitude and how the terrain shapes the wind. The mountains don’t protect Brattleboro as much as they do places North where the mountains are higher since our weather tends to come from the West and the South, and sometimes from the NorthWest out of Canada.
Humidity is relative to temperature; I’ve been noticing that when the dewpoint is high is when it actually feels humid outside.