Nearing our wettest year on record

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Now that 2016 is winding down, we tally up the liquid precipitation total for the metro, and we are going to finish as one of the wettest ever.  Timely precipitation all year has kept our soils moist, our lakes, creeks, and rivers above normal (in some cases at record levels), and the state green, totally preventing ANY drought conditions to appear area wide.  While May and early June were pretty dry, the rest of the year had very timely precipitation events.  In fact, it’s not just the overall total for liquid precipitation that’s impressive about 2016, it’s that we had so much consistency in WHEN these rains and snows would occur.  Our longest dry stretch of weather came just last month as we started November with 17 straight… but STILL managed to finish the month well above average in rainfall.  We have now jumped to 6th place on our list of wettest years and will need just shy of 2 inches of liquid in December to break the old record of just over 40 inches in 1911.  That would once again be above average because we typically get a shy under 1.5” for the month.