Don't like the rainy weather? Just wait for August to come
The Valley's annual rainfall was slightly below normal before July.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- There is better weather ahead for us.
Unfortunately, we're not going to see it until August.
As for the rest of this week, except for a brief reprieve from the rain Friday, it's going to be wet.
"So much rain has fallen that you can't take anymore," said Tom King, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland. "If you get any more thunderstorms, it's going to cause problems."
Not that it hasn't already. Flooded streets and basements were found throughout the Valley on Monday because of the rainfall.
If it weren't for this month's already being the eighth-wettest in weather history with 8.23 inches, and the third all-time worst July for rainfall, the Valley would be slightly below normal when it comes to rainfall for the year, said Gary Garnet, an NWS meteorologist.
As of June 30, the Valley had 18 inches of rain, or 0.1 of an inch below normal.
But the 8.23 inches that fell this month -- including the 4.65 inches that fell Monday, the most in a 24-hour period in this area -- is considerably higher than the 2.87 inches of rain that typically fall in July, Garnet said.
At the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna, where the Valley's official rainfall count is made, 0.51 of an inch fell Tuesday.
It was much worse in portions of Mahoning County, including Struthers, Campbell, Canfield, Boardman and Youngstown, where up to 3.5 inches of rain fell Tuesday, King said.
Where we stand
Because of July, the Valley is already more than 5 inches above the 20.97 inches of rain it averages in the first seven months of the year. There's still a little more than a week to go in July, and rain is in the forecast through Sunday, except for Friday.
An additional 0.08 of an inch through the rest of the month, an almost certainty the way we're going, and this July moves into the No. 7 position on the list of wettest months in the Valley's recorded weather history, knocking off July 1986. There is still a way to go before it challenges for the No. 1 spot, held by June 1986 with 10.66 inches.
The National Weather Service had forecast higher-than-average precipitation for July, Garnet said, but no one could have predicted it would be like this.
"It doesn't come as a complete shock, but this is quite bad," he said. "An active jet stream from Canada is continuing to give us wet weather. We usually get into a stagnant pattern in July that's hot, humid and dry. We didn't get it this time. It's the luck of the draw."
There is an end in sight, Garnet said.
We're just going to have to wait.
"Right now the forecast for August, September and October shows no significant pattern above normal, so we expect to have normal weather in those months, which means less rainfall," Garnet said.
skolnick@vindy.com