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May Showers Making Farmers Happy

More timely rains across North and South Carolina has put us in pretty good shape, that according to North Carolina assistant state climatologist Corey Davis, who joins me now. A couple of systems made their way through over the past week. Tell us about those, Corey.

“Yeah Mike, starting last Wednesday, really, we’ve had a pretty wet week to 10 days across the Carolinas. The first one of those systems, mainly right along the South Carolina border, brought totals of two to three inches in some spots. And then even wetter weather happened last weekend. In some places we had four to five inches of rain on Saturday alone. Certainly more rain than some folks probably would have wanted to see. But especially coming off a dry April, May has so far been exactly what we needed. Like you said, some very timely rainfall. And just for some perspective, we had only about an inch of rain in the entire month of April across a good chunk of central and eastern North Carolina. So far in May we’ve seen totals well above four to five inches and then local totals of upwards of eight inches in Greensboro more than six inches down in the Darlington and Florence areas in South Carolina. So while it was one of our drier Aprils on record, it is tracking to be one of the top five wettest Mays on record across a good chunk of the Carolinas.’

And for reference, we usually average in the Carolinas about an inch a week, is that right?

That is a really good guideline especially for this time of the year, about an inch of rain every week. But most of the Carolinas are tracking above their normal rainfall so far this spring.