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Annual precipitation

N

Nicky

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Feb 10, 2005
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Location
N.E. Oregon
Since the different areas of the country are SO different, I thought it would be interesting to see how much precipitation we all get.

What is your 'average' annual precipitation, when does most of it come, do you irrigate?

We get 9 -11 inches, at least half comes in the form of snow, yes we irrigate. Very little or no dryland farming in this area.
 
Here....NORMAL year should be an average of about 50-60" per yr. Up here in the hills...we tend to average about 72".


This yr is the first in about 4 that we've come anywhere close to that.
 
Our area of Alberta has averaged between 15.5 and 17.5 in per year from 1971 - 2000. That's annual precipitation.
Our record low rainfall was 3/8" total from May 1 to September 30th.
 
18.6" including snowfall in this neck of the woods, I've never seen anyone irrigating here but I've often thought it might be nice to set up a 1/4, then I would know I could get 2 cuts easily.
 
Our norm is 11.5 inches of moisture for the whole year with June usually being our wettest month with an average of 2.5 inches....

Down here on the river we do irrigate out of diversion dams and an irrigation district ran canal...Some pump straight out of the river when there is enough water...We've put water on about 200 acres of the haymeadows so far....Haven't irrigated the wheat/oat fields-- yet...
 
Our range and dryland is usually 7 to 9 inches annually. Mostly winter precip(snow/rain), then it gets real dry from now on. We will get some moisture when the hay is down, of course. It stays pretty dry until about September.

Thank god for the Columbia River irrigation system we have here. Otherwise there would not be much of anything here.
 
50-60 inches here. But not the last 4 years.

This is the main reason we have to nitrate pastures often. The rain just washes it away and through the soil.

I s'pose you have to give up something to get something?
 
Des Moines averages just under 35 inches of total precip and roughly 36 inches of snow.

The last 2 years hasn't been anywere close to being normal. In fact, I cann't recall the last time the Des Moines experienced a serious shortfall in precip.
 
We are in an area that gets good precipitation normally. I reckon in the 22-26 inch region. We usually get good rain in June (3''+) sometimes we get that in July too. The driest I recorded here were the drought years of '02 and '03 when we got 12.25 and 11.5 inches between May and September respectively. 2007 was a really good year for us with 17 inches between May 1 and Aug 30!!
We got dry last August, had 1/2 the usual winter snowfall and have had less than an inch of rain in May. We need our June rains to pull this one out of the hat!!
I know these seem like extreme quantities of rainfall compared to other areas but something to bear in mind is that the grasses and plants and carrying capacity we have are adapted to our fairly wet climate and we can suffer severe drought effects just like any other area if our rainfall levels fall by 50%.
 
Average 15 inches including snow equivalent. Growing season can be as little as 3 inches and as much as 20 inches.
 
Well as near as I can figure from looking at an atlas and then converting mm to inches, we get about 30 - 40 " a year here in South western Ontario.

We got 3" of that last Wednesday.

(I corrected these figures from my first post. I guess my metric to imperial conversion was off by about 1/2!)
 
We average between 11 to 13 inches here in the valley and around 25 on the mountain. 80% of all the crops are irrigated and the rest dry farmed. We get 2 1/2 cuttings on alfalfa and one cut of meadow hay. The regrowth is used each fall to graze cows after weaning the calves. We have a resevoir 12 miles south of us that collects the snow melt and a couple of creeks. Then we pipe it down here and have pressurized irrigation if you own shares of the water. Everyone else pumps deep wells to irrigate and for stockwater. The sad part about the resevoir is that it fills up by January most years and we lose a bunch of water that we cant store. But building another res or enlarging the exsisting one is too exspensive to do without Gov. help. And it is hard to get Federal dollars, even before the enviromentalists got control of the nation!
 
Here in Central Indiana we are supposed to get from 36" to 39" but this year we have had over 40" already - - - we just got 1.2" in the last 5 minutes - - - - but that counted the marble sized hail that beat everything into the ground!
 
As of today we have gotten about 8 inches in the last week and a half which is way above what we have gotten in the last two summers all together. Which for now is perfect timing since I have a hay field down and ready to bale
 
IN michigan 35-38" is about the norm. This year we had about 120" of snow at our place, we are 60 miles north of Grand Rapids. Snow amounts vary ALOT depending on location. Our weather is influcenced alot by Lake Michigan. The last two years very little moisture from june 1 to sept 1. It can vary alot, 40 miles south they have had 7+ inches of rain since last week of april, then us.
 

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