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Rain records in Pa. and abroad

By Jack Hughes for The 3 min read
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In the winter months we sure see our share of rain across Southwestern Pennsylvania but what would happen if we didn’t get any more rain?

I know many get fed up with the gloomy days of winter when the clouds, rain and drizzle want to hang on instead of dropping their abundance and moving on.

Rain … too much and it’s a flood, too little and we have a drought. When you think about it our area is kind of blessed in that most of the time we get just what we need in the way of rainfall which on average produces 42 inches in our lower elevations and because of the added lift of air rising against our mountains our higher elevations average 54 inches, 12 more than in town.

Our rainiest day in Uniontown occurred when Hurricane Carol dumped 4.60 inches of rain in Uniontown on Oct. 15, 1954. Almost two decades later Hurricane Agnes filled our streams and rivers as she visited Southwestern Pennsylvania filling our Uniontown rain gage with 4.34 inches on June 23, 1972.

The Election Day Flood of 1985 produced widespread flooding on the Cheat River when we received 3.23 inches of rain but areas just south of us had as much as 10 inches of rain. Entire towns along the Cheat were wiped off the map.

Our rainiest month produced 15.59 inches of rain and the driest month saw only 0.07 of an inch. Average rainfall per month is 3.50 inches.

If you lived in the Southwest, Yuma, Arizona, has only 17 days of rain with an annual average of just 3 inches. Las Vegas averages 4.5 inches per year with only 26 rainy days.

The driest place in the United States is Death Valley, California, with annual rainfall of 1.60 inches. The longest dry stretch occurred at Baghdad, California, when no rain fell for 767 consecutive days from Oct. 3, 1912, until Nov. 8, 1914.

Probably the driest region on the planet is the Atacama Desert of Chile in South America. Decades often go by with no measurable rainfall and the village of Arica averages only 0.03 inches a year.

We often think of Seattle and Portland as rainy cities and it might surprise you to know that both get less rain than New York or Washington, D.C. Nearby Erie Pennsylvania, with 162 rainy days a year, also has more than those west coast cities.

A one-minute record rainfall of 1.23 inches occurred at Unionville, Maryland, on July 4, 1956, and the 30-minute record of 7.00 inches was in Cambridge, Ohio, on July 16, 1914.

The biggest surprise and perhaps the most astounding rainfall record in the world occurred in Smethport, Pennsylvania, in McKean County when 30.70 inches of rain fell in 12 hours and 30 minutes. Today it is still known as the Deluge at Smethport, Pennsylvania. It’s hard to imagine that over 28 inches of this total happened in just three hours. No such rain intensity has ever been recorded anywhere in the world. Hillsides in the area were stripped to bedrock and 15 people died on that day.

The Johnstown Flood on May 31, 1899, was also the most devastating flash flood ever to occur in the United States. A wall of water at times 40 feet tall roared down the Little Conemaugh Valley, killing 2,200 people and destroying the city of Johnstown.

So much so close to home. Stay safe.

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