Jul 14, 2015 3 min read

Have you built your ark yet? Ripped up your swimming pool pass? Thrown your sunglasses out the window in disgust?

It’s completely understandable. Somehow, we seem to have been magically transported to Seattle or London this summer, or else their weather has been transported to us. We’re getting all of the rain while Seattle has sweltered through the past few weeks in triple-digit heat – virtually unheard of for them.

Yes, it’s been a rainy summer and, yes, we’re all sick of it. I keep thinking of punchlines for the joke, “It’s been so rainy this summer …” How would you finish that joke? As of the end of last week, 20 of our last 30 days included rain, and only one-quarter of the days so far this year have been precipitation-free. At this point, our dismal weather is no longer a laughing matter.

Farmers and others whose businesses are affected certainly aren’t laughing. In May, some local farmers were fretting about very dry conditions. That month ended six degrees warmer and more than an inch drier than normal. Then came the June deluge: 7.34 inches of rain put us in the record books with the eighth-wettest June on record for Pittsburgh (the wettest June ever was 1989 with 10.29 inches of rain).

Now, fields are so waterlogged that those same farmers are worrying the overabundance of rain will ruin current crops and prevent planting of the fall ones. Our lawns have never looked so lush, but who wants to slog the mower through muck and mud to cut grass that’s growing faster than the field at PNC Park?

Golf courses sit idle during rainy days while only a few brave duffers risk getting doused in mud with every divot they create. On those rare days that do bring sunshine, the courses are so packed that foursomes end up in traffic jams at each tee awaiting their turn. Swimming pools sit eerily silent. Kids don’t really care if it’s sunny – they’d spend the entire day in the pool no matter the weather. But round after round of severe weather and lightning has made a day at the pool this summer an adventure.

Waynesburg’s Rain Day is coming up, and what do you think the odds are that it will rain this year? As of 2014, it has rained on Rain Day there 114 out of 141 years.

Despite this El Nino-influenced weather pattern raining on our parade so far this summer, we could get lucky and catch a break in the parade of storms for late July and August. Things could turn around. Consider the summer of 2012, when June came in as the ninth-driest on record for Pittsburgh. The next month, July slogged in as Pittsburgh’s 10th-wettest on record.

It’s been a bummer of a summer, but it really would be ironic if Rain Day this summer actually wound up dry.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.