(WWJ) – While Metro Detroit saw a decent amount of rain – and even some hail – on Tuesday, things have been pretty dry around here lately.
In fact, we had gone about three weeks without any rain at all. And our part of the state was far from alone.
All of Michigan went the entire month of May without any reports of severe weather – tornadoes, wind damage or large hail – according to AccuWeather meteorologist Brian Thompson.
“That hadn’t happened since 1993. Looking back at recent years, we usually have at least a couple dozen reports or at least something in the double digits,” Thompson told WWJ’s Tony Ortiz on this week’s “Weather Wednesday.”
In 2018 we had 72 reports of severe weather in May, according to Thompson. So why was May so quite across the Mitten?
“One of the reasons was, we just didn’t have a lot of precipitation,” Thompson said. “To get severe weather, you need moisture, you need thunderstorms. We just didn’t have a lot of those in the month of May.”
Simply put, Thompson says “drought breeds drought." In essence, when the ground gets dry, that can "make it difficult for rain to form."
“You’ve probably noticed over the last several weeks we haven’t had very many humid days. It’s been fairly dry, it’s been fairly comfortable. A lot of the reason for that is because the ground is so dry, so we just haven’t really had the moisture to help fire up thunderstorms,” he said.
Thompson said while we’re not necessarily in a “long-term drought” here in Michigan, Tuesday’s rain was “a drop in the bucket.”
“We didn’t have any rain at Metro Airport and really across much of the area from May 21st through June 10th – it was about three weeks – but we finally did pick up a little bit of rain, about ¾ of an inch over the last few days,” Thompson said.
But we were about three inches below average in May, meaning the recent rainfall was “just not a whole lot of relief,” though it was “certainly good news to get any rain at this point.”
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