Dry conditions began developing back in mid to late May and worsened with the above average temps, and continued dry weather in June. Now we are in to July and while localized areas have seen some much needed rainfall over the last week, most of the area is still very much in need of rainfall. Outside of the hit and miss storms, that has been about all the area has seen.

June rainfall

rainfall tallies on the month sitting in the 2-3″ range for a good portion of the Alleghenies. Some locations, especially Tucker County picked up some much needed rainfall right at the end of June to help those numbers out. Often, those localized rains come in rapidly, fall on dry, hard soil and runoff vs the majority soaking in and it’s not as helpful as rainfall tallies would indicate.

Those June numbers running below normal in spite if those localized tallies

This on the heels of a dry May that saw below normal precipitation

since May 15th departures look like

from January 1 through May 15th departures looked like

from Garrett County and areas north, above average precipitation had been the theme. So the short term drought conditions are much worse overall than the long term.

year to date for 2024

1/1 to 7/5 at Bittinger 2NW Valley I’m at 31.73″ of precip. That’s combined rainfall-snow/sleet/freezing rain melt.

at this point in 2023 I was at 26.21″. While

However June of 23′ saw 5.67″ as June of 24′ saw 2.71″. Since May 15th through July 5th 4.60, last year 6.57. Still, below last year for the period, but better. A development of drought occurs much more rapidly under these above average temps, peak daylength, vegetation growth, etc.

The current U.S drought monitor

• state by state

• A great example and impacts on the short term, thanks to the time of year, hot weather

Our last 60 day %of normal, which similar to some of the maps further above

Soil moisture conditions

• Our past weeks precip below

Again, some areas getting some much needed rain, and often a lot of this occurs so rapidly with storms, it ends up being mainly runoff

So, Ok, it’s dry. That’s established. What is ahead in the near term? Any hope?

Not much in the front several days, but as we go towards mid next week there is some potential hope that some of the moisture from the remnants of Beryl get caught up in the pattern and can provide some beneficial moisture.

Yesterday’s 12z ECMWF looked a little more promising than this mornings 0z

now this mornings 0z

and the 6z GFS

The system looks to come inland and just get absorbed in to the overall pattern and the determination on the precip path will be where the stationary boundary lays the moisture will run along. Very possible the moisture is held west by the strong ridge that remains in the Atlantic forcing everything around the perimeter. That’s the first hope of anything beneficial and if that strikes out long range modeling at least for now hints at some beneficial moisture mid month and NOAA is on board

These patterns like we are in are not rare or uncommon. Wet seasons with above average precipitation and dry seasons with below average precipitation are how averages are made. There is NO normal. Normal is a very over used word in terms of temperature and precipitation. Averages often have a wide range of how they have came to be.

The Palmer Drought Severity Index for late summer over the Wv Alleghenies over the years as compiled by NOAA

Summer precipitation(June-Aug)

Often when we are dry, or wet, there is often a lot of hysteria that things are not normal. Throw out the word normal , and look at the range that creates the “averages”.