2018 A Wet Year

By Mark Keith, 01/3/19 4:24 PM

The first few days of 2019 have been wet but the whole year of 2018 was wet. According to statistics released by the Southwest Research and Extension Center, Hope received 69.33 inches of rain for the year ending December 31st. The average is 54.47 inches which means that Hope is up 14.86 inches for the year. December was a wet month with 8.87 inches received compared to a normal rainfall for the month of 5.38 inches. In fact the only months that had below average rainfall were January, April, May, and June. The month with the biggest rainfall was February. 13.21 inches of rain fell during February compared to a normal rainfall average of 4.51 inches.
2018 had two of the coldest days in years. January 17th and 18th posted lows of 4 degrees while the next day posted a low of 9 degrees. The 17th and 18th were the coldest lows since the early 1980’s. In addition, the first six days of the year posted lows in the teens. November posted an unusual 12 days with lows in the 20’s.
The summer brought some extremely warm temperatures. July brought five days with high temperatures at 100 or above. The hottest days were July 20th with a high of 104 and July 21st with a high of 105.