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Mariton: May’s Rainfall

June 5, 2019

by Tim Burris, Preserve Manager

If you watch the local news channels, the meteorologists were talking about how wet it was in May. You probably didn’t need someone to tell you it was a wet month.  A lot of people had standing water in their yards at one time or another.

At Mariton, I recorded 9.65 inches of rain for the month. My (23 year) average is 4.78 inches, so that is more than twice the average for May.  That is a lot of rain – but then you probably didn’t need me to tell you that.  This sets a new record for precipitation in May at Martion.

In 1998, I recorded 8.53 inches during May. It wasn’t twice the average, but that was a wet May.  Conversely, 1998 was a relatively dry year with only 46.02 inches recorded for the entire year.  (My average is 53.10”.)  The driest May was in 2005 when I recorded 1.39 inches of precipitation.  That year finished with 56.73 inches.

By the end of May, I had recorded 27.22 inches of precipitation for the year. The average for the same period is 19.87 inches.  Another way to think of that is that we have received almost two months of rain above average for this period.  Keep in mind that my data is skewed to the wetter side.  I have only 23 years of data.  If you look at the region’s data going back to the early 1900’s you will notice that our precipitation rates have been rising over the past two decades.  Since this is the same time I have been recording precipitation at Mariton, my yearly averages are going to be wetter than the long term averages.  It is interesting that even with my short recording history, I can see that change.