News – Sheridan Media
Not only was this past summer a wet one in the Sheridan area, 2023 will be one of the top 10 wettest years on record.
The National Weather Service Office in Billings, Montana, says as of this past Sunday (October 15th), 21.01 inches of precipitation has been record for the year so far.
That makes it the 7th wettest year on record.
This past June, July and August, which is referred to as the meteorological summer, ended up being the 3rd wettest meteorological summer ever, with 8.7 inches of precipitation.
June ended up being the 3rd wettest June ever (5.36 inches), and August was the 7th wettest August ever (1.98 inches).
Searching the weather records, to find the 2 years that had a wetter summer than this year, you would have to go back 100 years to 1923 when there was 9.92 inches, and in 1944 when there was 11.51 inches.
Joe Lester from the National Weather Service explains what happened this year.
“We had a weather pattern, basically it was just conducive to keep our humidities high, we kept our greeness high through the summer and it feeds upon itself, so you stay green longer, you stay humid, that allows for more frequent rain showers, wet thunderstorms, that kind of thing, so it was a pattern that was favoring pretty frequent precipitation near the mountains.”
As far as the wettest year ever in Sheridan’s record history, you would once again have to go back to 1923, when nearly 30 inches of precipitation was recorded.
This year is about 8 inches behind, but there’s still about 2 ½ months remaining in the year.
Years with more precipitation than 2023: (National Weather Service)
1923 – 29.79 inches
1944 – 24.58 inches
1955 – 23.82 inches (this was the last time before 2023 that Sheridan recorded more than 20 inches of precipitation in 1 year)
1946 – 23.57 inches
1915 – 22.51 inches
1927 – 21.78 inches
2023 (through October 15th) – 21.01 inches
The lowest amount of precipitation record in one year was 8.23 inches in 1960.
More Like this
Last modified: October 16, 2023