After a dry start to 2025....July has not been a disappointment in terms of rainfall! Take a look at where we stand as of July 20th in the rainfall department!
Cities, such as Annapolis and Baltimore, have received almost twice their average July rain! Other towns like Hagerstown and Chestertown are closer to normal for the month.
It should come to no surprise that July has been rainy...after all, it is our rainiest month of the year based on 30 year averages.
But what makes summertime rain slightly different is that it tends to be convective in nature. What does that mean? In layman's terms....most of our summer rain comes from thunderstorms, whereas our winter rain comes from what we call "stratiform precipitation," which means a long duration precipitation event. Typically our winter rain will be a light to moderate rain that lasts all day. The word stratiform stems from the type of cloud that produces our wintertime rain. Why does this matter? It matters because our summertime convective rain come in quick bursts, which make it more likely to cause flooding.
The million dollar question becomes what will August be like?
To keep it short and simple...the Climate Prediction Center is calling for near normal rainfall for the next two weeks. This means the drought is unlikely to improve, but also unlikely to get worse! I wish I had more entertaining news to bring you, but the month of August is looking quite vanilla!
