Caribou, Perham, Washburn endure the most precipitation
By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — In the spirit of the Fourth of July and the barbecues that have become synonymous with the celebration of Independence Day, one could say that it rained “cats”up and hot“dogs” during the afternoon thunderstorms that rolled through Central Aroostook County on July 4.
Pathetically bad puns aside, it did rain pretty hard; according to Noelle Runyan, warning coordination meteorologist at the Caribou National Weather Service Office, the storm hit Caribou, Perham and Washburn the hardest, pouring 2.38 inches on Caribou in just two and a half hours and leaving a total of 2.58 inches of precipitation in its passing.
While it may seem that the region’s been hit pretty hard this summer by intense rainstorms, the weather is not indicative of a larger precipitation trend.
“You can call this the luck of the draw in some respects,” Runyan explained. “The overall weather pattern that has occurred so far this summer has led surface boundaries (warm and cold fronts) to basically linger over the area. These boundaries ‘focus’ thunderstorm development over the same areas, but this was not necessarily the case across the rest of Maine,” she explained.
While July’s just started, June seemed pretty wet for Aroostook County. According to Runyan, Caribou had a monthly total of 9.03 inches of rainfall, which was 5.72 inches above normal,” and easily broke the prior record of 7.3 inches of rainfall recorded just [last June.]”
But while folks in Aroostook County were donning their umbrellas and rain boots, Bangor had a monthly June rainfall total of only 2.79 inches — that’s 0.62 inches below normal.
June was pretty soggy for Aroostook County standards, but 2011 as a whole is looking to be on the damp side of the spectrum.
“So far the total precipitation in Caribou from January 1 through June 30 is 25.36 inches, which is a new record,” Runyan said. The previous record was set in 2008 at 24.19 inches of precipitation over the same amount of time.
