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Year so tar among
the wettest ever
LISA G. CURRIE
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
October 1989 will be remembered for several things — Hurricane Hugo in the Carolinas, the San Francisco earthquake in California and the unusual precipitation levels and high temperatures in the east.
Around here, farmers may smile when they remember the rainfall of 1989.
' June dropped 5.15 inches of rain on the county with July leaving 8.42. August left 3.54 inches and September added 4.35 inches. Some months measure less and some more, with August usually being the wettest month due to “hurricane affect rains,” according to Sperryville weather-watcher Dennis Wingfield.
Even though October’s Hurricane Hugo was a possible threat to Rappahannock, in the end it left few raindrops here. “This October has been one of the wettest in recent years,” Mr. Wingfield said, referring back to his weather ledgers which date back more than 20 years. “We had more rain the first two days of this October than we had the entire month of October last year,” he said, explaining that his figures show the area receiving 1.55 inches of rain Oct. 1 and 2, while in 1988, October’s rainfall measured juSt 1.26 for the entire month.
Mr. Wingfield said he measured and recorded 3.85 inches of rainfall between Oct. 17-20 of this year. “Hugo gave us nothing compared to that,” he said in reference to the threat of Hurricane Hugo and rainfall received a week after Hugo’s burst onto land in South Carolina.
“It’s either feast or famine,” Mr. Wingfield said describing the weather in October the last nine years. “Four of the last nine Octobers have received four or more inches of rain, four pf the last nine have received four or less inches,” Mr. Wingfield said, adding that one year he recorded the average — about 3.3 inches — of rainfall.
All these inches of rain add up and the total looks , good for groundwater levels around the state.
“We are coming off one of our wettest years in a long time,” Chris Knappenberger, a research assistant with
See WEATHER, p. 16
91.3%