The rain arrived in Reading on Saturday morning and it did not stop until Monday at midnight. The weather people measured 7.6 inches of rain. That is almost 20 cm!!
- On Saturday it rained 2.72" (6.9 cm)
- On Sunday it rained 3.10" (7.9 cm)
- On Monday it rained 1.79" (4.6 cm)
There was quite a bit flooding especially in Woburn (8.4" of rain) and Winchester. In Woburn one main road was closed because it was under of foot of water. In Arlington I saw hoses emptying water from houses (I assume basements).
I am thankful that the house is dry and that it was not colder and get buried under a mountain of snow. According to the NOAA website:
On average, thirteen inches of snow equals one inch of rain in the US, although this ratio can vary from two inches for sleet to nearly fifty inches for very dry, powdery snow under certain conditions.
That means it could have dumped 100" (8 ft 4 in or 2.5 m) of snow which is an insane amount. Actually, it would be a lot less than that since colder air (required for snow!) can hold a lot less water than 'warm' air as shown in the graph below.
During the 3 rainy days the temperature here was about 43F (6 degreed C) Assuming a temperature of 32F (0 degrees C) then it seems likely that it would have snowed about 50 inches which is not unheard of. Here people talk all the time about the Great Blizzard of 1978 which dumped over 50 inches of snow in some places. A lot of people that lived through it share horror stories about it. Therefore:
Rain is good. Really!!
03/17/10 Update
Same graph in Fahrenheit scale on the x-axis.
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