January 1, 2009
By Wally Kennedy and Andy Ostmeyer
Joplin Globe
In a year when cities around Missouri set or came close to records for rainfall, the town of Miller got some of the worst of it.
Missouri State Climatologist Pat Guinan said the most precipitation recorded in Missouri in 2008 was in Unionville, near the Iowa border, where a weather station logged 73.96 inches — almost double the town’s average of 37.26 inches.
Photo: Newell Bowles said he started 2008 by writing down how much precipitation fell at his farm near Miller. So much rain had fallen by mid-March that he gave up keeping track on his calendar. More than 72 inches of precipitation was reported for the year in Miller.
But Miller, in Lawrence County, wasn’t far behind, reporting more than 72 inches for the year.
“I’ll tell you, it was a wet one,” said Miller farmer Newell Bowles.
Around the state, some farmers lost entire crops or saw yields suffer because of late spring planting.
“I think in general, it was a bad spring for crops,” said Bill Wiebold, a plant science professor at the University of Missouri. “Frequent rain meant farmers couldn’t get into the fields and do what they needed to do, including planting their crops.”
Still, all that rain didn’t ruin Bowles’ crops.
“Grainwise, we ended up in great shape,” he said. “It quit enough during (wheat) harvest that we ended up pretty well.”
He was 30 days late getting his soybeans in because of the rain, but he got them out before the first fall freeze.
“Fortunately,” he said, “mine were just barely under the wire.”
BIG RAINS
Rain wasn’t the only remarkable feature about the weather in Southwest Missouri in 2008. The region was strafed by killer tornadoes and swamped by the remnants of two tropical storms.
“It’s been quite an interesting year for us,” said Steve Lindenberg, who started as a forecaster with the National Weather Service station at Springfield in 1994. “The weather this year is the most variable weather I have seen since I have been in the weather service, and Southwest Missouri has some of the most variable weather in the United States.”
The year, he said, started with a tornado outbreak in January, but it was the persistent rain that people were talking about all year.
Joplin logged 63.16 inches of moisture in all forms in 2008, making it the third-wettest year on record. The record was set in 1985, with 65.25 inches. Local weather records go back to 1902. Annual average rainfall for Joplin is 46 inches.
Had Joplin experienced normal rainfall in the last three months of the year, 2008 would have been a record-breaking year, Lindenberg said. Joplin normally receives 10.89 inches from October to December. It received 6.37 inches in the last quarter of 2008.
A study of Joplin’s water supply, recently released by the Water Resource Center of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, shows that rainfall has increased from about 35 inches a year in 1950 to 50 inches a year in 2000. In fact, six of the wettest 10 years on record have been recorded since 1985.
What is causing the increase is not clear, but some climatologists suspect that global warming could be putting more moisture in the air and contributing to a shift in the jet stream that is putting more unstable weather over the Midwest.
A 2007 study by Gene Hatch, a climatologist with the weather service at Springfield, determined that Southwest Missouri is getting more incidents of light to moderate rainfall than heavy rainfall events.
Joplin wasn’t the only city wrestling with rain in 2008.
The Missouri Department of Conservation reported that more rain fell in St. Louis in 2008 than in any year since official record-keeping began in 1870. The city received 57.96 inches of rain in 2008, compared with the long-term average of 38.75 inches.
The rain gauge at Cape Girardeau collected 11.49 inches on March 18, establishing a 24-hour rainfall record for the city. A gauge at Kirksville overflowed at 11.34 inches on July 25.
2008 also is poised to go into the record books as the state’s wettest ever, eclipsing even the Great Flood year of 1993, according to Guinan, the state climatologist.
He said projections indicate that the state will average just more than 57 inches of precipitation, a fraction above the record of 56.9 inches set in 1993. But it will be a couple of months before the final statewide numbers are official, he said.
“We have the dubious distinction of having the largest above-normal (precipitation) departure in the country,” Guinan said. “Many counties received more than 60 inches, and a handful reported more than 70 inches of precipitation.”
BIG WINDS
Guinan said that by the end of the first week in January, Missouri already had reached its yearly average for tornadoes. During a 12-hour period that started Jan. 7, 29 twisters were reported in Southwest Missouri. Two people died.
“That obliterated the previous record for January, more than doubled it,” Guinan said. “For the year, preliminary numbers show that there were more than 70 tornadoes — again, more than double the average.”
2008 WEATHER FULL OF HEAVY RAINFALL, TORNADO OUTBREAKS
On May 10, one of the deadliest series of twisters on record in the region swept through Ottawa County, Okla., and then into Newton County. Half of Picher, Okla., was blown away. Twenty-two people died.
New research released this summer confirmed that a La Niña effect repositions the polar jet stream over a region of the country that stretches from Texas to the Great Lakes. When that happens, the jet stream — a shifting river of air at high altitudes — brings an abundance of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico into the Midwest. That, coupled with high winds and a storm system with cooler air from the West, provides the primary ingredients for violent weather.
Joseph Schaefer, director of the Storm Prediction Center at Norman, Okla., said his research suggests that during a La Niña, the favored area for tornadic activity “goes right through Southwest Missouri.” He said the May 10 tornadoes were indicative of that pattern.
La Niña is characterized by unusually low ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, as compared with El Niño, which is characterized by unusually high ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific.
The Climate Prediction Center, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is predicting a 50 percent chance for La Niña conditions in early 2009.
Also in 2008, two tropical-storm systems, the remnants of hurricanes Gustav and Ike, made it all the way into extreme Southeast Kansas and Southwest Missouri before dissipating, said Lindenberg, with the weather service. According to hurricane records, it has been more than 20 years since the remnants of two or more tropical systems have reached the Ozarks in the same year.
The Climate Prediction Center’s forecast for the Four-State Area through February predicts a greater than 50 percent chance of warmer-than-normal weather. There also is a greater than 40 percent chance that the same region will experience wetter-than-normal conditions.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Top 10 wettest years for Joplin
Year Precipitation in inches
1985 65.25
1990 63.57
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