A few days ago I noticed that rain had close to filled a plastic fish tote I had left in the garden to protect my early sprouted garlic from spring’s northeast wind. Square-sided fish totes are about 12 inches deep, so it takes a lot of water to fill them.
This late winter and spring have been wet and wild. The National Weather Service provides helpful charts for a reality check. Sure enough, rainfall hit a record of about nine and a half inches in March at the nearest station to us, in Islip; the so-called normal is a bit under four inches for the month. Another record was broken in January, when seven and a third inches fell at Islip. That said, February was below average.
April’s only notable rain came on the third of the month, when about an inch and a third gave us a good soaking but set another daily record for precipitation. For the rest of the month, the Weather Service predicts more normal rainfall with air temperatures above normal.
I had not intended for this column to end up being about climate, but the numbers take me there. A warmer atmosphere takes up more moisture from the soil and oceans, then returns that water in the form of rain and snow. From last century’s low during the immediate post-World War II years, the extent and frequency of above-normal precipitation has shot upward in the United States. Nine of the top 10 years for extreme one-day precipitation have occurred since 1996, the Environmental Protection Agency reported.
Wind, too, is affected by the climate. Around here, the most trouble caused by wind is coastal erosion, but it seems the older trees have shed limbs more often than before — winds and rains of change.