2018 Rainfall - By the Numbers

Our family likes to track things and see trends and use the information, if we can.  If we can't use the information, at least our curiosity is satisfied.  One of the indicators we track is rainfall.  We have a rain gauge outside and each time it rains, I'll go out and get the rainfall totals and then come inside and post it to a log that we keep.  Here are the total 2018 rainfall inches, by month for rain that fell on our farm:

A total of 65.4 inches was recorded.  Just for grins, I searched the rainfall average for our zip code and found that 60.35 inches is the average.  So once again we are above average rainfall amounts here.  As you can see, September was the wettest month.  It was uncharacteristically wet.  The driest month was March.

I've been compiling these records since 2013.  Let's take a look at five year history of rainfall on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm:

One thing that stands out is that the wettest month appears to be August.  However, looking a bit closer, we see that this designation is skewed by the monsoons that fell in 2016 and again somewhat in 2017, and that altered the averages.  The next highest months for rain is April and May.  "April showers bring May flowers."  As far as driest, it appears March wins that category, although November is a close second.

You'll notice that from 2014 through 2017, we increased rainfall totals each year.  2018 we reversed that trend, due to an unusually dry spring.  Although beginning in September and ending in December, we had rainfall totals wetter that previous years.  Normally, a fall garden is easy to put in, but this year, it was so doggone wet.  My fall garden was late and not as big as it normally is, but you do what you can with what the Good Lord provides.  Anyway, it is always very interesting to look at the actual rainfall in comparison to previous years.  We've already begun to track rainfall for 2019...