Below average rainfall so far this year

Pop quiz: How much rain has Cape Girardeau received this year?

With all of the crazy weather this year (the historic ice storm, the "Inland Hurricane"(*), and many thunderstorms), it would be easy to figure that we've received well above average precipitation this year.

Actually, that's not the case at all. Cape Girardeau is slightly below average so far in 2009.

The map below shows the total rainfall as a percent of the long-term average. Grey is normal, yellow is slightly below, and orange is well below. Notice that Cape Girardeau is at the edge of a large area of yellow, while areas to the north, west and south have received normal or slightly above normal precipitation:

Taken from water.weather.gov

Hopefully this is just a statistical fluke and not the start of a trend.

A new kind of cloud?

This story from the wire caught my attention: Iowa woman's photo sparks push for new cloud type.

You never know when you might see something truly weird, like a new kind of cloud formation previously unknown to science. That's why I don't like to leave home without taking a camera.

Footnote

(*) The storm on May 8 wasn't actually an inland hurricane or any kind of tropical system, as the National Weather Service keeps pointing out, but instead was a progressive derecho with an unusually intense bookend vortex. Or something like that.