Drought Busters

The weekend's rain went a long way toward relieving the drought in the Washington DC area. The map of the Maryland/DC/Virginia area, from the National Weather Service's experimental Precipitation Analysis, shows the rainfall for the 24 hours ending at 8am Sunday. There was a wide variation across the area, from the merely generous to the nearly stupendous. Notice the southwest-to-northeast banding structure, with the heaviest amounts both northwest and southeast of the District. As Jason explained earlier, showers and thunderstorms are likely late tomorrow, especially south of the Beltway, but the rest of the week looks quite fine.

Tonight and Tomorrow

Lows tonight under mostly clear skies will be from the low 50s in the city to the upper 40s in the colder 'burbs. Clouds will increase tomorrow afternoon with highs around 71. There is a 60% chance of showers and possibly thunderstorms late tomorrow afternoon through the evening, with higher amounts likely in the southern portion of the region.

Deficit Reduction

The above-average precipitation so far in April has reduced the accumulated yearly deficit from around 40% at the beginning of this month to 24% as of today. The chart shows the official observations at National; weekend rainfall at Dulles was over twice as high. At Dulles, nearly a month's normal rainfall fell in one day, but the total is still well short of the April monthly record of 7.35" set in 1973.

CapitalWeather.com chart from NWS data, photo © Kevin Ambrose

Capitol Climate

The American Meteorological Society's Environmental Science Seminar Series on Capitol Hill continues next week on May 3 with the topic, "Changes in Cold Places - A Look at the Greenland Ice Sheet, Arctic Sea Ice and the Antarctic Ice Sheet".