Rain, rain, go away! A phrase many of us were quite literally shouting by the end of the month as the Quad Cities experienced a record number of rainy days for the month of May.
Precipitation totals were also quite impressive across the region with the Quad Cities coming in third place for the wettest May on record. That record itself will remain standing which was set back in 1974. We came awfully close, though! When looking at the average precipitation for the month, we experienced more than five inches above normal.
Some other May totals from around the Quad Cities:
Davenport: 8.14″ (+3.89″ vs normal)
Burlington: 10.30″ (+5.45″ vs normal)
Dubuque: 5.23″ (+1.04″ vs normal)
As you can see, the heaviest rains were centered from the Quad Cities and points south, with locations closer to the Illinois/Wisconsin border picking up slightly lower amounts, but still impressive for the month of May.
For the Quad Cities proper, our longest stretch of rainy days during the month occurred in two instances, between May 16th and May 22nd when we picked up 3.76″ of rainfall, and May 24 through 30th when we picked up 4.42″ of rainfall.
We did manage to set the record number of days with observed rainfall in the Quad Cities, coming up at an impressive 24 days. This beats out the old record of 21 days set back in 1933.
The news doesn’t get much better at least in the first half of June. An active pattern is expected to pick up once again with near-daily chances for showers and storms through June 8th. As of right now, the steadier and heavier rains look to lay out just to the south of the Quad Cities, but places like Burlington will need to keep an eye on the forecast as some of the heavier totals are coming quite close.
With this pattern, there will also be a few chances for severe storms, but those are details that won’t be well known until around 48 hours in advance of each event. Needless to say, flooding will continue to be an issue for the next few weeks.
Meteorologist Andrew Stutzke
Download the News 8 Weather App — for iOS, click here and for Android, click here
Download the free News 8 App — for iOS, click here and for Android, click here
