March Rains Way Above Normal; April Likely Bringing More

“Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote …”

GRACE CREEK ALMANAC – Even Geoffrey Chaucer, 600 years ago in the prologue to his Canterbury Tales, was writing about the rain.

With another three inches this week, counting Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s downpours, soggy ground has grown even more saturated. These rains, however, certainly aren’t addressing any droughty March.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Sarah Johnson of the Mt. Holly, New Jersey office says the pattern we’ve seen since about mid-December has brought a steady number of really wet systems with little time between. “Not much time for the ground to dry out,” she said.

December brought us 7.7 inches, and January pounded us with another 6.4 inches – both well above average. February brought a short reprieve with only 1.5 inches before the water machine cranked back up again.

March’s rainfall for the mid-Delmarva Peninsula averaged as much as four to five inches above normal, she said, and the long-range forecast for April suggests the month will also likely bring above-normal amounts of rain.

This week brought the year’s first official warnings for severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes. Wednesday’s rumblings confirmed those warnings though tornadoes stayed mercifully away.  The last thing we need is high winds testing sodden roots and toppling tall loblollies ringing this low-country section of Talbot County.

Keep the chainsaws fueled up, powered up and handy.

The trench I have dug in our heavy clay soil for new grape vines is filled with water. No sense in planting them yet.  They would just float away.

I won’t have to worry about watering them, or the blackberry and raspberry plants also awaiting planting.

Johnson said a relatively strong El Niño system in the Pacific, which typically drives rainier weather across the US, is starting to ease.  The steady series of storms that have been coming across the south and then chugging off to the northeast are part of that scenario.  “It’s notable that these storms tracking near or just west of the ocean also tend to have a lot of moisture,” she said.

Those storms have also brought us a lot of easterly winds driving high-tide events along the coast, here in Grace Creek, and elsewhere along the Chesapeake.

The weakening El Niño, she said, should ease us into more of a neutral situation by late spring and early summer.

My landscaper friend Tom said farmers he knows are tearing their hair out, waiting impatiently to get into their fields. “But as wet as it is, at least we’re not in a drought,” he said with customary optimism. “There’s nothing more debilitating than a drought.”

With the possibility of a La Niña scenario in the Pacific next winter, Johnson said, we could see an opposite pattern with drier conditions and fewer of this winter’s back-to-back rain and wind events.

In the meantime, April may continue piercing our soils to the root.

PS: As a man of faith, I went ahead and planted the berry plants anyway. If Noah gets the call, I’m confident that along with the animals, he’ll also snag my berry plants and drag them aboard for the next post-alluvial era.

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.