Regular rainfall in April has created a wet monthand continue a series wet weekends This year. Warm and windy weather also ignited the state’s biggest wildfire in more than a decade.
A wet April statewide
Several heavy rains last month resulted in a wet April across North Carolina. According to preliminary data from the National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI), the statewide average rainfall is 5.29 inchesranked as ours 15th wettest day of April since 1895.
After drying Steps are, the sky opens in April, starting on the first Friday of the month. On April 7, a cold face manufacturing statewide tracking total rainfall more than 2 inches in parts of Piedmont.
The Raleigh-Durham Airport had 2.02 inches that day, which was the heaviest total daily rainfall since the remnants of Hurricane Ian moved over on September 30 of last year. In southern Wake County, flooding closed some roads in Fuquay-Varina.
Next Friday brings more rain like a low pressure system moved from the Gulf of Mexico and Wake County is home to the highest total. Our ECONet station at Reedy Creek Field Laboratory recorded a total of 24 hours of 1.96 inches.
Eight days later, the next rain – this time, on a Saturday – brought 1 to 2 inches of rain to much of eastern North Carolina, along with severe thunderstorms. Five tornadoes were confirmed on April 22, including one near Lake Norman And four other people in Duplin, Onslow, and Jones counties that afternoon.
The month ends with another soggy weekend, this time thanks to a low pressure system that fell total of three days more than 3 inches along the Outer Shore. That remains standing water along Highway 12, while the Neuse River at Smithfield comes small flood period after a local total of 2.5 inches.
That rainfall combined makes it one of the wettest Aprils in the entire state. Asheville, CharlotteAnd Wilmington had the wettest April 9 on record. IN Greensboro And Raleighit’s the third wettest place. And on the coast, New Bern there is 4th wettest April, while it is 6th wettest April Hatteras.
Wet weekend trend
If you feel that weekend littering is particularly popular this year, it’s not just your imagination. Since the beginning of 2023, it has rained on Saturdays and Sundays with incredible frequency.
Historically, we tend to see rain on about half of the weekends from January to April. But so far in 2023, it has rained on more than 70% of weekends almost everywhere in the state.
IN Raleigh, at least some rainfall was observed on 16 of the 17 full weekends this year, with rainfall measurable on 14 of them. Both are highest ranked January through April since modern records began in 1945.
It’s a similar story in Charlottethere was measured rainfall over the weekend, and in Asheville And Greensboro, with rainfall measured on 12 weekends. It is even true in the generally arid eastern regions. IN Hatteras14 of the 17 weekends this year have measured rainfall.
No matter the intensity, from drizzle to flooding, our rain events always coincide with the weekends perfectly. And no, it’s not some plot by Mother Nature to constantly ruin your outdoor plans.
This calendar curiosity is a coincidence, perhaps partly explained by the timing of weather systems that move every 5 to 8 days or so. We’ve seen rainfall with such stubborn frequency in the past, such as four winter weekends in January 2022 and three Wednesdays it snowed in a row in March 1960.
This year’s run of wet weekends is impressive because of its length and also because we’re coming out of La Niña winter, in which we tend to have less rain in the first place.
we were really drier than usual in winterand more than 79% of the state’s area is classified as Unusually Dry (D0) or experiencing Moderate Drought (D1) in early April.
However, our April showers have helped to eliminate any dryness that has come from the winter, and most areas now have excess rainfall for the spring climate. Even at the beach, Wilmington 2.15 inches above normal rainfall from March 1 to April 30, and Hatteras is 3.06 inches above normal for the spring so far.
This is the first time we’ve had a completely blank US Drought Tracking map — no drought or unusual dry conditions in North Carolina — in more than two years, starting April 13, 2021. .
Warm weather causes another big fire
In April, we left winter behind and enjoyed stable spring-like temperatures. NCEI reported a statewide preliminary mean temperature last month of 60.1°For ours April 26 is the warmest over the past 129 years.
The warmest-than-normal areas are in the eastern half of the state. It was the hottest April ever recorded for Ocracoke based on 37 years of data there. Wilmington had the 2nd warmest April, just behind 2017. And Raleigh (identical with the 6th warmest), Greenville (associated with the warmest 8th), and City of Elizabeth (ranked 10th warmest) all had remarkably warm April.
Our warmest weather occurs early in the month. April 5 and 6, temperature climb up the mid 80’s EQUAL upper high pressure puts us beneath a quasi-tropical air mass. In Sandhills, laurinburg climb to 88°F, while in the mountains, to the west Murphy reached 84°F on April 5 – the first warm day since 2012.
A few days later, behind a cold front aisle, we had the coolest night of the month. On April 10th, low temperature dip into the 30 and even people over 20 at some point, including at our ECONet station in City of Siler.
That single cool night didn’t do much damage to early-flowering crops, but it did slightly hinder the greening of some vegetation, prolonging the time. spring fire season even despite the occasional rainfall.
In that respect, the biggest event of the month is Great Lake Fire in Croatan National Forest in Craven and Jones counties, which began on April 19 and quickly spread over more than 30,000 acres amid windy And less humid weather conditions.
As of May 1, the fire had burned 32,400 acres and was 63% contained. This is the largest fire in Croatan since the so-called Dad Fire that started over Father’s Day weekend 2012. That event burned 21,331 acres in the same area as the current fire.
Statewide, this is the largest wildfire since Evans . Street fire in 2008. That fire burned and smoldered for several months that summer on nearly 42,000 acres at Pocosin Lake National Wildlife Refuge, and its smoke sometimes caused an air quality as well. poor air even inland.
Fortunately, our late-April rains, which ranged from half an inch to an inch over the last weekend of the month, helped raise the water table and saturate the ground where the organic-rich soil is burning. . But that was not before a few days of smoke with poor air quality, including rare Code Purple forecast for very unhealthy conditions in parts of eastern North Carolina.
