First Alert Weather In-Depth: Rain or snow or both

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Did you get enough rain this past weekend? I mean it was coming down in buckets for some of us, especially on the east side of town.

As a result the month of April ended with above average precipitation. However, most of that rainfall arrived in just the last two weeks of the month.  Specifically, over the last 16 days of April the Rochester Airport had measurable precipitation for 12 of those days. 

So how does the precipitation measure-up for the entire season? That is interesting because overall we had very little snowfall during the winter. In fact, the seasonal snow was about half of what we normally measure. Here is the question. If we did not get much snowfall, where did all the measurable precipitation come from? it had to be from a significant amount rain.

A look at the monthly precipitation – which includes both rain and snow –  was well above the historically average for January, February, March and April. Yes, we got plenty of precipitation, but a lot of that was in the form of rain.  So the latest tally at the Rochester Airport for precipitation shows that since March 1^s, we are running about an inch above normal. And if you go back to January 1, we are running closer two and a half inches above normal.

It is safe to say we have gotten plenty of precipitation for the flowers – at least for now.