We obsess over the old adage “April showers bring May flowers.” Sometimes this saying holds true, but most of the time it just seems like an over-generalization used to ensure spring rains are welcomed and not just a damper on your mowing schedule. We’re certainly wondering if the saying will hold up this year, and what it really meant in 2018.
YES – April showers did bring May flowers in 2018. The month of April received 4.91 inches of rain and is right in line with what most plants will require this time of year. May only received 3.27 inches of rain, perpetuating that a higher amount of rain in April will give a jump-start to the blooming season. If you stop there it seems to make sense. If you take a step back, however, the adage seems to lose a little weight. Last year was a record-breaker in many areas of the state and across the nation with unusually high amounts of rainfall and flooding, in part due to the hurricane season. Last year several months beat out the month of April, making these April showers seem a little unimpressive. According to the rainfall data taken from the Smith-Reynolds airport December even had more rainfall than April with 5.31 inches, September received 6.27 inches of rain, August got 6.91 inches, October even rained 7.35 inches, and ironically July topped it all with 7.87 inches of rain for the month. Now, that’s something to talk about since July is typically our driest month. We think it much more impressive than a few April showers.
Well, what about this year? In April we had 2.42 inches of rain and this month we are up to 1.26 inches, so though we are in keeping with April being a wetter month, we have seen substantially less rainfall than last year locally. It should be noted with the pop up storms we’ve had, precipitation can vary widely from area to area. In April, the Piedmont Triad International Airport recorded a whopping 11.04 inches of rain in April and 4.9 inches so far in May. Interestingly, May 2018 to April 2019 are being dubbed the wettest 12 months in U.S. history. Some parts of the state have already received over 40 inches of rain this year and the Piedmont has gotten up to two feet of rain. The Mississippi River is also struggling to handle all of this rainfall, with some areas of the river being in flood stage for over three months and several spots are setting various records. For the rest of the summer, we are unsure of what to expect. Currently our temperatures are well above average, but not quite record setting. While we are going through a hot and dry spell (keep your plants watered!) we’ll just have to stay tuned to see if it continues!
Read more about the Mississippi flooding here.
Photo Credit: From our Pinterest board “Spring Blooming Plants”
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