Calculating Metro Detroit's crazy amount of rain the last 32 days
"Man, we've gotten a lot of rain recently!"
I've heard so many people say that, and while I too agree with it, I like to dig into the data to see what's going on. So I did! Over the last 32 days, we've gotten almost 5 and a half inches of rain at Detroit Metro Airport in Romulus. That's where "official" measurements are taken.
Locally though, many people have seen much more. Heck during the flooding weekend of June 25-28 parts of Downtown reported over 8 inches of rain!
In fact, this is THE reason I don't love looking at rain totals for single sites and projecting them out for entire regions - it just doesn't tell the whole story.
That said, for the sake of this article, bear with me: The 5-and-half inches we've had in the last 32 days is over 2 inches more than we usually see during this Summer stretch.
But digging further, it's not just the amount of rain, it's the frequency of rain.
I went day by day to total up how many days of rain we've had and it's mind-blowing. Out of the last 32 days, it's rained 22 of them! That's nearly 70% of the last month!
It's so hard to enjoy Summer activities when it's raining three out of every four days!
The kids can't play outside and I can't get the grass cut. We all lose. In fact, if you remember, we were in a pretty bad drought from May to June. Well, that flipped quickly!
We now are out of drought monitoring thanks to more than enough water. I mean, we needed the water - but not all at once!
Thankfully, I do see a large pattern shift beginning Sunday that lasts through most of next week.
Boy, do we need a break!