Omaha and Lincoln recorded their wettest March days ever, said meteorologist Taylor Nicolaisen of the National Weather Service in Valley. All the rain caused the weather service to issue flood warnings, especially in lowland areas.
Omaha recorded 2.58 inches of rain at Eppley Airfield on Sunday. That was more than the previous rainiest day of March, when 2.44 inches fell in the city on March 27, 2004.
Nice, could be looking at an additional half inch or so of rain and potentially a small amount of snow Wednesday into Thursday morning. Don't worry, if it does snow, it'll be gone like that.
Omaha Cowboy wrote: Wed Mar 17, 2021 10:30 pm
After all the rain we’ve received since this past Saturday evening, I think we’re good with moisture for awhile now...
Ciao..LiO...Peace
You might feel that way, but we are still a good 5" behind overall.
Omaha Cowboy wrote: Wed Mar 17, 2021 10:30 pm
After all the rain we’ve received since this past Saturday evening, I think we’re good with moisture for awhile now...
Ciao..LiO...Peace
You might feel that way, but we are still a good 5" behind overall.
Well, as the map from the National Weather Service Coyote just posted points out, we are not in any sort of drought condition as of 3/16/21.. Not even classified as “abnormally dry”..
I dont know where they get that. If you carry over our deficit from last year, we are still behind by about 5". Not that I'm complaining about the rain we just got. We can let this soak in and evaporate for a week id be looking for more at that point.
Busguy2010 wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 1:27 pm
I dont know where they get that. If you carry over our deficit from last year, we are still behind by about 5". Not that I'm complaining about the rain we just got. We can let this soak in and evaporate for a week id be looking for more at that point.
I don't think an area needs to have the same rainfall as the previous year or be at the average of the previous years. The definition of a drought is based on the impact it creates. So by placing us in a non-drought category, they are effectively saying that we are not currently being affected or seeing adverse effects at this moment (agriculturally, economically, etc).
And I'm pretty sure i misused affect/effect at some point in there, please don't judge.
I had to do this just so I could really know... It looks like when I was talking 5" behind, I wasn't accounting for the normal moisture for each month.
So using the NWS's data, in 2020, we were behind by 14.78" in rainfall. Including the snowfall seasons of early and late 2020, we were ahead by 6.4" in snowfall. So, using that rule of thumb of 10:1 ratio for snowfall to moisture (I know that's far from perfect, but I'll just roll with it. If anything, you could more easily assume the ratio is lower, meaning less moisture actually came out of it), we were behind by 14.14" of total moisture at the end of the year last year.
Assuming we see no more snowfall or rainfall by the end of the month, we are ahead in rainfall by 2.43", and ahead by 17" in snowfall. Using that same ratio of 10:1 for our snowfall, we are ahead by 4.13" in total moisture so far in 2021.
If you were to carry over the deficit from 2020, even though we are delightfully ahead in moisture for 2021, we are currently still almost exactly 10" behind.
Also not saying it would be good to have 10" above average moisture in one year. I don't even think that would be safe. It would be better to spread that over several years.
If my calculations are correct, we would need 27.97" of moisture in the form of rain or snowfall each of the next 5 years to make up that deficit... Compare that to last year when we had 11.3" of moisture in rainfall or snowfall. So we would need to see not too far under triple the amount of moisture we saw in 2020 each of the next 5 years in order to make up for the deficit we had last year.
And then we can have another drought, fine.
Last edited by Busguy2010 on Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Omaha Cowboy wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:31 pm
I’m just happy to see the sun out shining again after a 4 plus day break...
Ciao..LiO...Peace
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the sunshine too. I just want to have a good balance. I'll take Sunshine and no rain 60 or 70% of the time. I just don't want to see anything on the level of last year when it was sunny, warmer than normal, and dry probably 95% of the time.
Busguy2010 wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:23 pm
Also not saying it would be good to have 10" above average moisture in one year. I don't even think that would be safe. It would be better to spread that over several years.
If my calculations are correct, we would need 27.97" of moisture in the form of rain or snowfall each of the next 5 years to make up that deficit... Compare that to last year when we had 11.3" of moisture in rainfall or snowfall. So we would need to see not too far under triple the amount of moisture we saw in 2020 each of the next 5 years in order to make up for the deficit we had last year.
And then we can have another drought, fine.
I think we need to worry more about where we are relative to historic longer term cycles of the past, in the 15-20 year range, rather than single or consecutive yearly average comparisons. The evidence seems to be that we are seeing an increase in unusual extreme events which can skew the totals for a given year. This may support current “climate change” theory. The recent cold air intrusion into the Deep South and Texas is a good example of an unusual extreme event, and the 2019 Floods in our region, and the record fires out west last year, to name a few.
He said "They are some big, ugly red brick buildings" ...and then they were gone.
Earlier in the thread, I expressed interest in finding out how certain periods of time compare to each other. If I had the time or the desire, I would find out all this for 2000 to present... Data for each year, data for each 5 year period, each 10 year period, and overall. It took me like 20 minutes to compile the data to figure all that out in my post a couple up. That's just for one year. So I doubt I'll do it.
It would be nice information to have. Our last major drought was 2012, so who knows, 2013-2019 could have made up the deficit for that year and we were due for a dry year. I just don't know. I do know I did not like it. I also know Mother Nature is going to do whatever she pleases.
Looks like a pretty good rain chance for Monday-Wednesday next week... Until then, enjoy the sun and above average temps.
Wow, nice! Looking more like this next rain could be just as significant as the last one. Crazy. Some thunder along with it would be nice, but I won't count on it.
That is crazy, the good news is that it didn't all come at one time. I believe we had a few years in a row where we had huge single day totals of rain in April and May, granted that could be yet to come this year.
All the moisture is sure helping things to green up fast within the past 2-3 days.
So when it comes down to it, this rain even did kinda peter out. Probably going to end up with around 1.75", and it never did really rain that hard. Still, very impressive moisture so far this year... We were due.
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