Every summer sucks. Hot, humid and dry. Ever notice how some posters get rain almost everyday and some go 2 weeks without a drop year after year? Thats not coincidence. Need a tropical system to get good rain unless you are one of the lucky few.
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I think we're paying the price for our epic spring. Droughts are going to become the new norm, despite what the outlook says.
The microclimate is definitely at play here in Wake/Chatham/Harnett.
I remember when both CLT and Raleigh used to do quite well in the summer months. Yes, we had droughts but we always managed to get some pretty decent storms, every summer. It also doesn't help that modeling has become so awful that it's worrisome. I'm done looking at models. They have been practically useless all year.
I miss those days when you used to get moisture pooling along boundaries in the late evenings and get slow moving storms firing up through the late evening with continuous lightning. Guess those days are gone.
That may spell big trouble down the road if they miss hurricane landfalls by 100+ miles.
I remember growing up in the 80s my dad having to run sprinklers to keep his garden alive. Meanwhile my grandfather 20 miles away never ran one and got rain several times a week. Terrain definitely plays a role in convection. Convection usually fires in the same areas almost always and maybe if others are lucky an outflow will trigger something.
The dry spots usually need better forcing to make it happen. But that's just my observation over 40 years of existence.
Gone just like our days of tracking legit snowstorms if the last two years are a sign of things to come. ?
I can’t speak for everywhere but can’t imagine it to be much different . Rdu has always had a slight summer precip maximum , meaning our wettest season is summer! Last 30 years not only have summers gotten hotter but they have gotten a lot wetter here , most notably in July/ August . I don’t know why everyone seems to think we are drying out. The stats don’t back you up, truth is exact opposite . Our summer precip max is even higher .
It’s not summer without a drought and heat. We get plenty of 80s with clouds and some rain in the fall and winter.
Yeah, we've had some wet summers as of late:
Average June-August rainfall at RDU is 13.49"
2019 - 14.94"
2018 - 17.38"
2017 - 10.79"
2016 - 17.14"
2015 - 15.48"
Edited to include total rainfall for my work's weather station in Moncure over same timeframe:
2019 - 19.77"
2018 - 18.66"
2017 - 8.35"
2016 - 18.34"
2015 - 14.89"
Five-year totals also quite a bit above average.
Average June-August rainfall at RDU is 13.49"
2019 - 14.94"
2018 - 17.38"
2017 - 10.79"
2016 - 17.14"
2015 - 15.48"
Edited to include total rainfall for my work's weather station in Moncure over same timeframe:
2019 - 19.77"
2018 - 18.66"
2017 - 8.35"
2016 - 18.34"
2015 - 14.89"
Five-year totals also quite a bit above average.
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Id have to go back through my weather history on my station and confirm but right off the top of my head and unless something changes drastically mby is on pace for 4 of 5 to be normal or below based off of RDUs numbers, if I blend Fay/RDU it's likely worse. I will always be a proponent of more official obs stations, using single sparse points during convective season poorly represents the whole and so far over the last 14-20 days that's obvious with some places seeing 4+ inches while others like myself seeing .25 or less. Again without confirmation and from memory I believe it was summer 2015 or 16 where the rdu airport was way AN yet JJA imby ended up with 4 inches total with 2 months less than 1 inch. There really has seemed to be a shift west over the last decade of the piedmont trough favoring areas along and west of the US1 corridor with the typical sea breeze affecting 95 and east and the sandhills convection getting Cumberland, moore, hoke, scotland areas leaving a sliver between 95 and 1 in the meh zone. Ive been trying to pull some of the old station and mesonet data to get a better average for my location and I think the station in Dunn averages 6-7 for the summer months over the past 30 years
2018.. what a summer had 30 inches of rain between JJA here. Think i finished the year around 80
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Brick Tamland
Guest
Man, I hope I can get a break from all these storms I've had here lately. I can't take that much more excitement.
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Brick Tamland
Guest
It seemed like in the 80s and 90s we would get a good storm like that roll through the Triangle at least once a week in summer. I wonder why it changed. Whatever reason, it certainly doesn't happen here anymore.
Not to mention the 2019 spring severe season was pretty awesome to, saw 3 wall clouds that year and 4 tor warnings and 1” hail from this little sup 
Yup. We had a lot of MCS's last year. Plus convection was a lot more widespread. Although, we paid for it when September rolled around. We went what... almost a full month with any rain and 95-degree heat well into October. Maybe this year will flipflop, we can only hope!
Those storms I had right before the switch to Cooler weather last October were super electric, I still wish I had my camera then
The end of August to the middle of October were brutal even in my area. From August 28th to October 12th my area had less then a quarter of an inch of rain. Alongside the crazy heat that was a really brutal time period.