2 days ago
Rainfall totals in the Wichita area break a 94-year-old record. How much fell?
Heavy rains caused flooding in the Wichita area on Tuesday, and set a June 3 daily record for rainfall totals that have been recorded since 1888.
Here is a look at how much rain Wichita got and how it compares to other days:
The rain started just after 10 p.m. Monday and stopped after 10 p.m. Tuesday. Over those two days, 2.95 inches of rain fell, with 2.47 inches of it falling on Tuesday.
Other significant, two-day measurements of rain in the Wichita area were 6.21 inches of rain recorded at Beechcraft by Textron Aviation on Greenwich, 5.18 inches at Jabara Airport and 5.98 inches in Towanda.
Bryan Baerg, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Wichita, said the roughly 4 inches of rain that fell over the Memorial Day weekend saturated the ground. Then, this hard rainfall in a short amount of time was too much for drainage systems to keep up with.
The 2.47 inches of rain on Tuesday is the June 3 record, surpassing the 1.67 inches set in 1932. The measurement was taken at the Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport.
Here is when Wichita had its last five rainfalls of 2 or more inches.
2.32 inches on May 25
3.13 inches on Nov. 2, 2024
4.24 inches on Oct. 25, 2023
2 inches on July 5, 2023
2.27 inches on Nov. 4, 2022
But none of those are close to the top daily rainfalls in Wichita. Here are the Top 5:
10.31 inches on Sept. 12, 2008
6.82 inches on June 8, 1923
6.03 inches on April 22, 1944
5.79 inches on Oct. 31, 1998
5.78 inches on Sept. 26, 1999
Wichita has had 15.48 inches of rain so far this year, compared to an average of 13.15 inches that Wichita typically sees by this time of the year. Wichita averages 34.31 inches of rain a year.
There are chances of rain later this week and weekend, but it will 'definitely (be) lighter amounts than what we saw yesterday,' Baerg said.
The heaviest of the possible rains is late Thursday and into Friday morning, when rainfall could be in the one to two inch range. Up to an inch more is possible over the weekend, he said.
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