There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that this summer has been quite unusual in terms of weather conditions. Granted, we say that every year, but this season has been quite different than the norm.
The most obvious thing has been in the amount of precipitation that has fallen across the state. Right now, only Pembina and Cavalier counties have abnormally dry conditions, which is weird in and of itself. Pembina County, especially, is normally one of the “wetter” counties in the state.
This summer, the southwest has had far more rainfall than it normally gets. I doubt any records are being broken, but suffice to say, it isn’t the norm.
When our family took our annual mini vacation to Medora at the end of July, we were absolutely astounded at how green it was in the Badlands. A year ago, that same trip on that same weekend was wrought with grasshoppers, intense heat and drought conditions.
Medora isn’t supposed to be green at the end of July. In mid August, my wife and I attended our grandson’s birthday party at a rural residence east of Lincoln. When I was in high school and working after high school, I traveled that road a lot from Hazelton to Bismarck and back.
I never saw it so green in the month of August. I told my wife I’m finding a hard time wrapping my head around this because it’s August, it’s harvest and high school football practice has started. It’s supposed to be hot and dried up in August and grasshoppers are usually invading the ripe cereal grains about to be harvested.
June, which has traditionally been our wettest month, appears to have switched places with August. We had far more rain in May than we did in June, generally speaking, then July brought much more rain than June and now August has produced twice the amount of precipitation as June did, again generally speaking because there are pockets of anomalies.
Take Ellendale for instance. That community in Dickey County has been getting dumped on all summer. You’d think it was a community in southeastern Iowa or something with all the rain it’s had. Typically well over an inch and often times up to 2 inches of rain in each event. The last time I looked, Ellendale was in North Dakota, and to get that kind of rain in August, it doesn’t compute.
Linton, Hettinger, Fort Yates and Carson have also had unusual amounts of rain. And when you go further east to LaMoure and points east of there, locals say they’ve never seen precipitation like these past two summers.
We’ve also witnessed a change in temperatures. Because we are now late into the summer, I can safely say most reporting stations in the state have not reached 100 degrees all summer. Typically, most places, Grand Forks and Devils Lake being the exceptions, reach 100 at least one time each summer. Not this year. Only a few places in the far west have hit that benchmark.
Rewind to four years ago when northwestern North Dakota saw nine days hit 100 or go past it. Three days in June, three days in July and three days in August. In 1936, which has always been the benchmark for heat and drought, saw four days hit 100 or higher.
The same can be said for fall and winter. The months of October and November can be pivotal months going into winter. But in recent years, the month of November at least, has been quite mild across nearly the entire state. That’s not terribly unusual, but to see that trend slipping into December is an anomaly.
If you look back at statistics, the first half of December has become more mild in recent years and when you see the UPS guy delivering packages on Dec. 10 wearing shorts and a T-shirt, on the northern tier of North Dakota, you know it’s not normal.
March and April have changed too. People often ask me if I plant my potatoes on Good Friday. My response, only if I had a jackhammer out there to chisel the frozen ground loose.
