July was one of the wettest

 

By DAVID SKOLNICK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

Youngstown, Ohio

 

It’s a month we won’t soon forget. When it rained, it poured.

 

The Mahoning Valley experienced a month of heavy rains, 10.39 incites to be exact. That’s good enough for the second most rainfall in a month in recorded weather history; 10.66 inches in June 1986 is the local record.

 

 Almost half of that fell July21, when 4.65 inches of rainfall was recorded at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna, where the official count is made. That was the most rain to fall in a 24-hour period in the Valleys recorded weather history. Other communities reported rainfall of about 7 inches during the early part of last week.

 

 The July rain caused major flooding in some areas, and left hundreds of basements damaged from water.

 

The July 21 rain slightly exceeded the area’s 50-year storm level. said Alan Ringo, a hydrologist with The National Weather Service in Cleveland, but didn’t come near the area’s 100-year storm

 

A 100-year storm is a certain amount of rainfall in a period of time that has a 1 percent chance of being equaled or exceeded; or a storm of such magnitude that it happens only once in 100 years A 50-year storm is the same thing except the rainfall amount is supposed to happen only once every 60 years.

 

 “It doesn’t mean you can’t have two 100-year storms in two consecutive days, just that it isn’t likely,” said Tim Burkert, a design construction engineer with the Mahoning County Engineers Office. “It’s like the lottery. You could get the same numbers in two straight days. Just because it happened once, doesn’t mean it can’t happen the next day.’                                

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