Yep. We've had a couple days straight of evening nasty storms.
Then steady rain last night, which was nice.
Steady light rain this morning, with sudden squalls down to zero
visibility... then I discovered that my blue-blocker sun glasses gave
good visibility in the worst of it.
We've had half our yearly allotment of rain in the past three days ;-)
I suspect in much of USA's "Desert Southwest" it's "par for the course"
for once in a while to get a few month's worth of rain in a bad rainy
couple of days in the summer.
There is such a thing as the "monsoon" of USA's Desert Southwest, with
annual average rainfall in summer months upticking, and in a wetter summer
maybe being at "semiarid" level rather than "arid", and a bad July in
some parts of Arizona I suspect could have rainfall approaching
mid-Atlantic East Coast July average, and do so mainly in a bad day or
two.
New Mexico I consider more infamous for bad thunderstorms than Arizona -
beware evem more there!
Heck, for that matter, I consider it close to par for the course for a
July in Philadelphia to get 40% of its rainfall in a 3-6 hour stretch,
with August often being even worse and September being only a minor
improvement over August. In August and September in the mid-Atlantic,
decreasing sunlight disfavors the more-common thunderstorms that peak in
June and July. However, temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean and the
Gulf of Mexico peak in August or so, and the "Greater North Atlantic
Basin" hurricane season usually peaks a little later still in early
September, with peak USA impact from those often as late as mid-September.
So, I consider "par for the course" of rainfall irregularity in such a
"humid" location as Philadelphia to be July to often have near or over 40%
of its rainfall in a 6 hour stretch (at least a few times per decade), and
for August and September to be more irregular still, as in often near or
over half the month's rainfall occurring in a single storm event largely
confined to a single stretch of 4-8 hours.
Also consider that the Philadelphia area is far from immune to drought
restrictions. Philadelphia is in the Temperate Zone, where the weather
has a temper, and all-too-often goes a good 2 months maybe more with
rainfall around half of "normal".
- Don Klipstein (
[email protected])
