The Hillsboro area has seen around 2.36 inches of precipitation so far this month, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website, which that the record-high for the month of September was 7.57 inches of precipitation in 1965.
Christopher Hogue, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Wilmington, said that concerning the rest of the year, from the beginning of the year until the end of August there were 38.04 inches of precipitation. Hogue said that when both of those numbers are added up, it gets “pretty close” to the average for the year.
“Precipitation tends to be kind of like isolated. So, some areas get, locally, much heavier than other areas,” Hogue said. “So, if there’s a gauge in Hillsboro that maybe got two-and-a-half inches this month, that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a few locations here and there, very isolated locations, that within maybe the county that got more than that. In general, you tend to average things out over the course of time… I know that here in Wilmington, so not too far away from you guys, most of our rain this month all fell in a couple days at the start of the month so we had like two inches through the first few days of September and then very little since then.”
For possible rain in the near future, Hogue said the weather pattern “just very radically changed” going from 90-plus degree weather and humidity to current dry and autumn-like weather, with several days of “much” cooler weather, meaning much less rainfall.
“I think the next chance of rain we have, maybe it’s Sunday, the next front moving through, but it doesn’t look like it’s a heavy rain producer, so we don’t foresee significant amounts of rainfall over the next week at least,” he said. “It’s a very progressive pattern, quick-moving cold fronts, cooler so the air holds a lot less moisture when it’s cooler like this.”
With the warmer seasons ending, winter is right around the corner, and as that season gets closer, Hogue said the organization works to predict whether a season will have more or less precipitation than usual, and also that while they might not be perfect, he said it does a “decent” job.
However, Hogue said that when a storm comes around in winter, 10 miles south could be seeing heavy rain but then 10 miles north of that could see snow and sleet.
“Rarely is it obvious, but we can try from a safety perspective though, that folks should prepare for snowy weather every winter because you can have a below-normal snowfall year and have one storm that just really is a dangerous type of situation and it’s better that people prepare for the worst of the winter weather,” Hogue said. “Even in quiet years, there’s a potential for like a ton of impacts from one big snowstorm. And the same thing if you compare it to like, if you live somewhere in Hurricane Alley or something, you can only have one hurricane all year, so it’s a quiet year, but that one hurricane could hit you and not a quiet year anymore, right? It’s kind of comparable, I think.”
Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.
