Thursday, September 10, 2009

A viewer wants to know why September and October have been so wet over the past few years. Good question.

September is off to a wet start. Parts of Kansas have seen over a half a foot of rain over the past few days. Just last September, areas of the state including Wichita experienced similar amounts of rain.

October 1998 netted over 10 inches of rain in parts of Sedgwick County, causing brutal floods.

"Well, this is pretty typical. It's not abnormal that you will get more rain form the transition from the summer to the fall. When you are going from the winter into the spring, you have to get the deepest moisture back in here as the more energetic systems are starting to slow down. But when you go from the summer to the winter, we have a lot of moisture coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. We are starting to get those fronts coming through here. So we have large areas of rain fall instead of the isolated thunderstorms," says KAKE Managing Meteorologist Jay Prater.

According to Jay, these rain events are not that unusual for this time of year. It’s a good thing Jay hands out his umbrellas at the State Fair.

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