I've finally completed my computations for the water year that ended last Thursday. For those of you at home keeping score, I'm sure you realize the final total is going to be a doozy. During the span of a mere 12 months, South Bend recorded almost 10 feet of precipitation!! The final tally comes out at 115.78".
Normal for a water year stands at 83.64" which means we ended up at 32.14" above normal. For me, however, the most astounding part of my tabulations is that, at the 6 month mark (Oct. - March), we were less than 1 inch shy of the typical 12 month mark. Put a different way, if we had received a mere 1 inch from April 1 - September 30, we still would have come out above normal.
Of course, our numbers here still pale in comparison to an average year at Olympic National Park (about 4 hours to our north). An off year for them sees around 200" of precipitation, though most of theirs falls in the form of snow. Almost ALL of ours this past year fell in the form of rain.
What remains to be seen is if this past year was an aberration OR if it will be the new norm due to climate change. We'll see as I begin to track the new water year.
Normal for a water year stands at 83.64" which means we ended up at 32.14" above normal. For me, however, the most astounding part of my tabulations is that, at the 6 month mark (Oct. - March), we were less than 1 inch shy of the typical 12 month mark. Put a different way, if we had received a mere 1 inch from April 1 - September 30, we still would have come out above normal.
Of course, our numbers here still pale in comparison to an average year at Olympic National Park (about 4 hours to our north). An off year for them sees around 200" of precipitation, though most of theirs falls in the form of snow. Almost ALL of ours this past year fell in the form of rain.
What remains to be seen is if this past year was an aberration OR if it will be the new norm due to climate change. We'll see as I begin to track the new water year.
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