Sloshing toward a weather record
While the weather may well improve before the economy does, for now the region is slogging toward a gloomy record.
While the weather may well improve before the economy does, for now the region is slogging toward a gloomy record.
As of yesterday, measurable rain had fallen in Philadelphia on nine consecutive days, and showers are possible today and tomorrow.
The record for this time of year - 11 straight days of rain - was reached during a wimpy spell in 1950 and far more impressively in 1894. It has happened only two other times in the 137 years of records.
The Inquirer was unable to reach anyone who recalled that 1894 siege, which featured about two months' worth of rain, but the newspaper described it as a spell of "ruin and misery."
This particular gloom-athon has been more dispiriting than devastating. That said, yesterday's rain did cause some minor flooding, and the prolonged wet spell could affect power supplies.
About 1,600 customers have lost power since Wednesday night, Peco Energy spokesman Michael Wood said. That's not monumental, but the outage numbers are likely to increase.
The saturated ground makes trees more susceptible to toppling, snagging power lines. In addition, all the moisture is weakening utility-pole cross arms and threatening underground cables, Wood said. Those cable outages can be particularly troublesome.
"These don't tend to be large," he said, "but they are harder to repair."
Despite all the rain, the region avoided major flooding, the harvest of a significant dry spell that ended around the spring equinox, about seven weeks ago. Yesterday's National Weather Service's flood warnings were the first in eight months.
Through Wednesday, the 90-day precipitation totals remained below normal throughout the region, and yesterday the major waterways stayed far beneath flood stages. The Delaware River at Trenton was at 9.6 feet, more than 10 feet below flood stage; the Schuylkill at Norristown was just over nine feet, or about half the flooding level.
About three inches of rain has fallen since April 29. That's an inch more than the 11-day spell that ended May 3, 1950, but it doesn't belong in the same paragraph with 1894.
That year, Philadelphia recorded 7.3 inches of rain May 15-25. "Widespread loss was reported from every district inundated," The Inquirer reported, "and distress and suffering will be entailed in hundreds of individual cases."
Nothing catastrophic looms in the immediate future; in fact, quite the opposite.
The all-time record for consecutive wet days is 12, in September 1889. Mother Nature evidently will not permit that record to be matched on Mother's Day.
"Starting Sunday and into next week, the weather is looking phenomenally good," said Bob Stauber, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly. "I mean great spring weather."
Daytime will be in the 70s and a tad humid, he said, which may slow the drying of all that overgrown grass.
But here's a word of warning: Once that grass does dry out, your neighborhood might sound like NASCAR Sunday as folks catch up with the mowing.
