Triggered by a stalled pattern of storms.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: May was the wettest month ever recorded for the contiguous United States, the National Centers for Environmental Information said Monday.
Total precipitation in May for the contiguous United States was 4.36 inches, which is 1.45 inches above average, federal meteorologists said, making it the wettest month on record since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration started keeping records of U.S. precipitation in 1895.
The state of California may be suffering one of the more severe droughts in history, but the U.S. as a whole had more than 200 trillion gallons of water dumped on it, according to NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch.
Crouch said the record was triggered by a stalled pattern of storms that dumped massive amounts of rain in the central U.S., especially in Texas and Oklahoma, which had their rainiest months, according to the Associated Press. Flash flooding in the two states proved deadly for dozens of people according to The Washington Post.
An astounding 8 million acre-feet of water flowed into Texas reservoirs in May, reported The Post — enough to meet the water-related needs of New York City for seven years.
“The majority of the precipitation fell in the southern Plains,” said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist with the information center. “This shows how a regional event can affect national statistics.”
Meanwhile, temperatures remained close to normal after months of record-breaking numbers that have been mostly blamed on rising greenhouse gas emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels, reported USA Today.
Tornadoes were also abundant in the month of May with more than 400 preliminary reports — the most since April 2011, the center reported.