Pitt County is on track for its second wettest July in recorded history after experiencing its third driest June, an expert said.
Heavy rainfall is bringing soils and waterways up to the norm and sparking new concerns about flooding and other water-related weather issues.
Corey Davis, assistant state climatologist for the North Carolina State Climate Office, said that Greenville experienced 5.58 inches of rain in the past week. As of Tuesday, local rainfall totals for July are up to 11.46 inches, more than double the norm of 5.87 inches in July over the past 105 years.
Greenville rain totals were higher than those in Edgecombe County — 3.5 inches, and Williamston — 4.48 inches, Davis said.
The totals so far this month put Pitt County on pace for its second-wettest July in 105 years of local observations. Only July 1939 — which saw 12.15 inches of rain through this point in the month — experienced more rainfall.
That starkly contrasts with June, when Greenville experienced a total of .45 inches of rain in the span of a month and only three days with recordable rainfall. That made this June the third-driest on record — 4.14 inches below the norm. Davis said those figures, compounded with an existing deficit, were a concern. On July 8, Pitt County’s rainfall total since January was nine inches below average. As of Tuesday, that deficit dropped to .92 inches.
Pitt and Greene counties, which the U.S. Drought Monitor had classified in severe drought since late June, were reduced to moderate drought on Thursday morning.
“It’s not just the recent rainfall totals that tell the story, either,” Davis said. “Streamflows have surged above normal across the Tar River basin, and the groundwater levels in Pitt County that had fallen almost two feet below normal by the end of June are now running more than three feet above normal.”
Information from the National Weather Service in Newport said that the Tar River in Greenville sat at just over 8.5 feet on Wednesday afternoon. A week prior, on July 19, the same data pegged the river at a mere 3.45 feet. Forecasts from the National Weather Service projected that on Saturday, the river would peak to 12.8 feet, just shy of the 13 feet that predicates the minor flood stage.
The rising water spurred the Greenville Rotary Clubs to postpone the annual Splash for Trash cleanup event set for Saturday. John Person, the event’s coordinator, said that was out of a concern for safety.
“The water gets really dangerous when it rises and it gets swift,” Person said. “We have people who come out who have never been on a paddle boat before and so, if the conditions are not just right, the river is not at 4 or 5 feet, it’s not ideal to do as far as cleaning it up.”
A rain date for the event has not been set. Person said that the rain is welcome, just not in the volume it has recently appeared.
“It was so ... dry until about two or three weeks ago and its just been a deluge ever since,” Person said. “I know we need the rain, but when it comes all at the same time it’s kind of disheartening.”
The added moisture is good news for some farmers. Jonathan Smith, field crops agent at the NC Cooperative Extension in Pitt County, said that rain over the past two weeks will help tobacco, soybean and peanut crops, but that cotton and corn may still suffer some yield loss.
As Smith reported in June, the area’s field corn crop has been especially devastated by drought and remains the most affected by drought conditions.
With drought concerns declining somewhat, Davis said worries now shift from not enough rain to too much.
“Now that the soils are saturated and the rivers and streams have risen, we wouldn’t mind turning down the spigot a little, at least so we’re not running the risk of flooding when these heavy rain showers and storms move through,” Davis said. “Looking ahead to the rest of summer and fall, that threat of an active hurricane season is still lurking. We know from past experience what happens when a tropical storm drops torrential rainfall over saturated ground.
“But that speaks to the pattern we’re in now,” he continued. “It’s a summer of extremes in North Carolina, and we’ve already run the gamut from blazing hot and bone dry to soaking wet.”
Davis pointed out that Greenville had two days with over three inches of rain — July 11, 5.03 inches, and July 22, 3.4 inches. Davis said those factor into the state’s past six weeks of “potent weather patterns” which included June’s heat dome that plagued the southeast with high temperatures and long spans without rain, that were replaced by cold fronts that stalled over eastern North Carolina and led to the high precipitation buoyed by southwesterly flows out of the Gulf of Mexico.
Research from scientists at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences indicates that heat domes are becoming more intense from climate change, Davis said, and rain events are becoming heavier with longer dry spells in between them. The North Carolina Climate Science Report, authored in part by Davis’ office, predicts more days with at least 3 inches of precipitation like the two days seen in Greenville.
“While it’s tricky to say exactly how much worse or more extreme climate change has made our recent weather — that requires detailed attribution studies and modeling that aren’t quick or easy to perform — these fast-changing conditions going from one extreme to another are undoubtedly becoming more common, and we’re seeing more evidence of that this summer,” Davis said.
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