Hardly A Water Record Left To Break

To no one’s surprise, a calendar year record rainfall has been set in Glasgow. A record rainfall for Aug. 31, .47 inches, brought the yearly total to 21 inches. This breaks the old calendar year record of 20.73 inches set in 1938.
July was a very wet month, keeping 2011 on a record pace for moisture. Severe thunderstorms on July 22 and 26 unloaded about an inch and a half each time. By the end of the month Glasgow had racked up 20.09 inches for the year, making it the fourth wettest ever. A mere .63 inches was needed in August to tie the all time 1938 record. A couple of good showers would take care of it.
But August fiddled around, staying slightly warmer and drier than normal. It began to look like breaking the record would take another month. Downtown Glasgow got a downpour on Aug. 29, but it was very localized and didn’t fall into the rain gauge up on the hill at the National Weather Service, so it didn’t count. However, another one of those severe gusty thunderstorms took it over the top last Wednesday.
One is now put in mind of Glasgow’s position last winter. By the beginning of February, the record snowfall of 2004, 70.7 inches, had been blown away. People began to wonder how much we would get. With so much of the winter left, would it reach the century mark? It did. On March 22 the season’s snowfall had reached the “amazing total” of 100 inches. In a couple of weeks, it peaked at 108.6 inches and proceeded directly into flooding.
Except for April, the following months were noteworthy for rain. May was a record; June and July were twice the average or more. The flood of record, April 18, 1952, was demoted to second by the river gauge in Glasgow on June 8 - 34.08 feet.
There’s hardly a water record left to break. Except most rainfall in 24 hours. That was 4.99 inches in August 1985. Since there have already been several flash floods this year, perhaps that one could be left alone.