"We will be releasing the new normals (1991-2020) next year," Easterling said. More: Are giant muskie returning to the French Broad? They've been absent from its natural flow Easterling noted the annual normal precipitation for the downtown station, on a 30-year average, is 36.99 inches.Īs far as all the heavy rainfalls of recent years throwing off the normal, Easterling noted NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information calculates those normals every ten years, and the current normal is for the period 1981-2010. While the National Weather Services runs the airport weather station, Easterling's outfit runs the downtown weather station, which sits atop the Grove Arcade. That 2018 deluge was an all-time record, by the way. More: Asheville's 7 biggest December snowfalls on record are nothing to write off "The Asheville area received only 33.4 inches in 2016, but received 79.48 inches in 2018." "Precipitation totals are also highly variable from year to year at any given place, including Asheville," Easterling said, noting that's because of our mountainous terrain. It's a National Weather Service map, which you can find here: So let's start there.ĭavid Easterling, director of the National Climate Assessment Technical Support Unit, part of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, in Asheville, referred me to a nifty weather map that shows just how dry Asheville is compared to other mountain areas. Real answer: I've addressed Asheville's status as the driest place in the state before, which is ironic considering the amount of beer here, but it's always a fascinating topic. My answer: I just know this: No matter how hard it's raining, my dogs still want to go for a nice long walk. What's going on with all of the extra water coming down in our area? What are the implications that are coming about because of what appears to be a pattern of change in the weather with a lot of extra moisture? Are the figures from the last three years being built into the annual average amount of precipitation, such that it would show the increase in our area, which I believe historically is one of the drier counties in this area? Are we the driest place in the state? Whether it's on an annual basis or the last three years, that's a lot of water, and we seem to be moving into the deep end of the pool. And if you go back to January 2019 to the present date, I think we've collected an additional five feet of water above the average amount in the last three years. According to data that I have, the average amount of rainfall for Asheville is 45.57 inches annually. I believe this most recent rain put us over 60 inches for the year - which is 5 feet of water - and we still have almost a month left in 2020. Question: When I went out to my mailbox early this morning to get my Citizen Times, once again it was raining. Today’s batch of burning questions, my smart-aleck answers and the real deal:
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