Rain, Rain Will Not Go Away

By Nancy K. Crevier

Lyricists Hal David and Burt Bacharach must have been peeking into the future when they penned the words to the theme song for the 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” is definitely the earworm that will not leave people’s heads this spring. Even as the sun finally fights its way through the gloom the final days of this month, the threat of precipitation hovers overhead.

Since the beginning of June, there has been hardly one day without rain. By midmonth, said Kenneth DiMicco at the Western Connecticut State University Weather Center, the Danbury area had received 3.36 inches of rain. The normal rainfall for the month of June is 4.13 inches, and it is quite likely, said Mr DiMicco, a meteorology student at the college, that the number will jump up beyond that average before the month is over.

According to records at the Weather Center, the last time this region experienced a significant, continuous downfall of rain was in April of 2007, when 7.38 inches of rain fell, most of it between the 12th and the 17th of the month.

What is making this month seem so endlessly rainy, said Mr DiMicco, is not that the amount of rain is hugely greater than what is usually received in the spring, but rather that the rain is falling every day.

“We haven’t been seeing it every so often, or one night then a couple of days later; we’re getting it all in big chunks this year,” he said.

Weather.com shows that Newtown has had observable precipitation nearly every day, ranging from .01 inches on June 4 to 1.99 inches on June 18. The long-range forecast was not particularly uplifting for beach-lovers, either. Only the very last day of June shows a 100 percent sunny day.

A happy medium between reality and the prediction in the 2009 Farmer’s Almanac for the Atlantic Corridor would have been nice. “May will be very warm and dry. Below-normal rainfall will continue through the summer, with the threat of a significant drought…. Temperatures will be below normal, on average [true, so far] with the hottest periods in June and mid-July,” reads this year’s regional forecast entry.

The sun may fight its way through the clouds on occasion over the next several days, but Mr DiMicco suggested it might be prudent to keep those umbrellas near by. “Weather conditions are so variable that it’s hard to look much further ahead than 10 to 12 days when predicting weather, but it could be a while before we get a break in the weather,” he said.

In the meanwhile, it could be time to look into a rainwater collection system to make use of the softer, pH-balanced water that is falling generously from the sky — just in case that Farmer’s Almanac prediction of a drought comes true.