Rain on Friday helps ease dry conditions in region

Cooler temperatures and nearly half an inch of much-needed rain ushered in the last summer weekend in Southeast Missouri.

The rain Friday -- measured at just under a half-inch in Cape Girardeau -- ended a nearly three-week dry spell, said Deanna Lindstrom, observation program leader at the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky.

"We have been dry," Lindstrom said.

Before Friday, Cape Girardeau had received only trace amounts of rainfall on Sept. 1 and 16, Lindstrom said, leaving it 1.77 inches below normal for the month.

"I wouldn't say that we were in a drought," said Ryan Presley, a National Weather Service meteorologist. "I think we were becoming perhaps abnormally dry and perhaps teetering on drought, but I don't think we were actually in drought."

Despite heavy spring rains that sent residents of Dutchtown and other flood-prone areas scrambling to construct makeshift levees as the Mississippi River rose, the area is running about 4 1/2 inches below normal rainfall for the year, Presley said.

"The rain that we got yesterday kind of began to bring us back up to where we should be, although we're still below normal for this time of year," he said.

Things could be much worse, Presley said.

"If this kept up for a couple more months, then we would be much more concerned," he said, noting that by this time last year, some areas were 15 to 20 inches below normal.

Statewide, the driest weather this year has been in the northern part of Missouri, where moderate to severe drought conditions stretched across parts of nearly 50 counties, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor map released Thursday.

The map showed no drought conditions for just under 42 percent of the state, including Southeast Missouri.

A year ago, the entire state experienced some degree of abnormally dry to drought conditions -- a circumstance that stretched into January. But by June, that number had fallen to well under 1 percent, U.S. Drought Monitor reported on its website, droughtmonitor.unl.edu.

Rainfall tends to follow seasonal patterns, Presley said, with more precipitation in the spring and less in the early fall.

As weather systems make the transition from winter to spring, moisture coming from the Gulf of Mexico brings heavy rain and storms, he said.

"As we get into summer and fall, weather systems have less moisture to work with," Presley said. " ... The spring is typically the high end. The fall is typically the low end."

The dry season generally begins sometime in August and extends through September and October, with rainfall picking back up in November, he said.

This week should be "absolutely gorgeous," Presley said, with highs in the mid-70s and lows in the upper 40s, eventually creeping back to the 50s.

The next chance of rain will be the upcoming weekend, he said.

epriddy@semissourian.com

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