news-record.com

GREENSBORO — For only the second time in the past decade, Greensboro enters the long, hot summer without a significant rainfall deficit.

But even with a soggy June, the precipitation total for the year — 21.03 inches — is less than an inch above normal.

“Yes, there’s a positive number there,” said Ryan Boyles, director of the state climate office in Raleigh. “But it’s not much.”

That’s why you won’t find the city’s water officials celebrating.

“I don’t know that anybody in our business is going to jump up and down just because we have had a wet spring,” said Kristine Williams, business manager for the city’s water resources department. “If the rainfall stopped all of a sudden, we could have a drought this fall.”

State officials agree. They point out that the extra rainfall this year has been a welcome and unusual change.

National Weather Service data for Greensboro show that since 2000, most years have gotten off to a dry start. Six of those periods rank among the driest in the past 80 years.

Even 2009 started out dry, with rainfall totals in January and February well below normal. But conditions changed in March and June as storms rolled through.

So far this month, 5.67 inches of rain have fallen at Piedmont Triad International Airport. That compares to a normal rainfall of 3.53 inches.

“That has caught you up,” said Mike Moneypenny, a meteorologist at the NWS in Raleigh. “It’s a terrific month.”

In many areas that’s true.

The rain has filled two of the city’s reservoirs, Lake Higgins and Lake Brandt. Officials have lowered water levels in the third, Lake Townsend, about a foot while crews replace the dam next to the marina.

Stream flows and groundwater levels appear about normal, and city water consumption has dropped 4.5 million gallons a day from June 2008, when Guilford suffered through a severe drought.

The rain has left landscapes lush and green, eliminated the need for farmers to irrigate and boosted the area’s corn crop.

Surprisingly, the rain has helped keep down the mosquito population by washing away the eggs and larva that collect in standing water before they can produce adults.

“But that’s about to change,” said Karen Neill, urban horticulture agent with the N.C. Cooperative Extension in Guilford County. “Now that the rain has stopped and it is not flushing these areas clean, they ultimately start to hatch out. Sooner or later, they are going to show up.”

The extra moisture already has taken a toll in some areas. Lawns have developed stands of mushrooms and a disease called brown patch. Plants that got too much moisture died from root rot. Tomatoes, squash and green beans haven’t produced in abundance because of a lack of sunshine.

The rain has made it difficult to mow and cure hay, reduced the yield on wheat, drowned some stands of soybeans, washed away herbicides and kept farmers from cultivating their crops.

It delayed tobacco planting about a month.

The extra moisture has deterred garden plants and crops from developing deep root systems.

“The worst case scenario would be if the rain cut off,” said Roger Cobb, extension director in Alamance County. “It would be devastating. (The plants) wouldn’t be prepared to go exploring for water.”

That’s the concern of state weather officials, too.

“We know we are better off than we have been in several years,” Boyles said. “But four to six weeks of dry weather and we could see problems again.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com.