In May, the weather forecast was dismally similar for most the month in Northwest Arkansas. Rain, mostly cloudy skies, and more rain with dry, sunny days being the exception. People had trouble keeping up with cutting the grass in their yards, there were delays for construction workers, floodgates were opened at Beaver Dam, and some campground sites along the lake were closed due to flooding.
Often the National Weather Service would forecast a tenth of a quarter of an inch of rain “with more possible in thunderstorms.” Then, several times, it rained three to four inches or more. But NWS Meteorologist Pete Snyder, who works out of the Tulsa, Okla., office, said the amount of rainfall in May wasn’t unusual for this region.
“With thunderstorms, you will have considerably heavier rain,” Snyder said. “When you have showers around, there has always been heavier rain in convections that are holding a lot more water. You get a lot more rainfall from thunderstorms.”
Data indicates that the first five months of the year, the amount of rainfall reported in our area was an inch shy of normal. For the Fayetteville weather station, rain totals were 19.9 inches but the end of May compared to a normal of 20.9.
“We are actually right about average to what we are used to seeing,” Snyder said. “Last year, 2020, at this time we were quite a way ahead of that at 27.7 inches. Last year was a wetter year if you compare what we have had so far this year.”
But you would be right in saying it has been a cool winter and spring. Snyder said there have been more days of cloud cover and, as a result, the temperature has been cool. The average monthly temperature for Fayetteville so far this year has been 63.6 degrees, 1.7 degrees below normal.
Snyder said that amount of temperature variances is not considered abnormal.
“We’ve seen a cooler May than what we normally see, but we are not seeing anything beyond normal weather variation,” he said. “If that were to be consistent over hundreds of years, then that is a significant change. You are taking extremes and making an average from the extremes. We’ll have years where we see either cooler or warmer Mays.”
Local organic farmer Andrew Schwerin said people who believe we have had an abnormally wet May could be a result of what he calls “recency bias.”
“May is, on average, the wettest month of the year here,” Schwerin said. “Let’s make it through the historically driest months, July and August, before judging this year’s rainfall.”
Schwerin said May was good for a lot of the crops that are challenging to grow well in the short spring between the last hard freeze and hot summer days.
“This sort of mild May really lets those crops thrive. Some examples would be snap peas, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, and spinach,” he said. “The cloudy cool days do make life more difficult for young summer crops like tomatoes and squash. As a farmer, I’m losing track of how many cool springs we have had in a row. I used to plant sweet potatoes in late May, and now early June is on the early side. A blueberry farm in the area tells me their crop this year is delayed 2-3 weeks later than normal.”
For long term forecasts, he relies on the NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. It isn’t possible to make precise predictions more than three weeks out, but NOAA looks at global patterns to predict likelihoods.
“June has a slightly better chance of being wetter and cooler than average, a notable factor being the presently wet soil in Oklahoma,” Schwerin said. “Late summer is likely to be as hot as normal, and precipitation could go either way.”
The rainy, cool weather hasn’t kept people who love to fish off the water. They are just fishing in different spots.
“The poor people who fish on the bank are having to struggle to find places to fish,” Lisa Mullins, owner of Customer Adventures Guide Service, said. “People in boats love it because they can go places they normally can’t because the water is high. I fish the lake a little and I like to throw into brush or rock piles that are not usually underwater.”
Mullins likes to say there is never bad weather. There is only bad gear. You can wear whatever you need if you want to fish badly enough. People she takes fishing usually have extra raingear or borrow from her.
No one prefers going out to fish in the rain.
“But they will do it if the fish are biting,” she said.
The lakes and rivers are still too cold for most swimmers. But Mullins said that the cold didn’t stop the kids from getting in the water on Memorial Day weekend.
“The water was like 50 degrees, but kids, and adults with too much alcohol, jumped in anyhow,” she said.