September rainfall breaks records in a few area towns

Some towns saw more than a foot of rain

ROANOKE, Va. – It seems as though more times than not, we've been talking about flooding and heavy rain this past month. The song, "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day comes to mind.

Here we are, on the verge of October, tallying up the numbers from this past month's rain. . 

Not one place in our area fell below half a foot of rain for the month.

The average rainfall for the month is anywhere between 3.5 and 4 inches. 

We researched data for 27 towns across the area, and put that data into a graph below. 

That raw data is shown below too. What this tells us is that rainfall records were broken in Big Island, Buena Vista, Galax and Rocky Mount. That's especially impressive for a city like Rocky Mount, whose data started being collected in the late 1800s

Towns in the yellow text (Huddleston, Martinsville, Pulaski Staffordsville and Stuart) saw their second wettest September on record. Towns in green (Bedford, Christiansburg, Hot Springs, New Castle, South Boston and Wytheville) all saw their third wettest September on record. 

With October on the horizon, drier days are ahead. Quite frankly, we need that.

If you have any questions after reading this article, feel free to reach out to me on my Facebook page.


About the Author:

Meteorologist Chris Michaels is an American Meteorological Society (AMS) Certified Broadcaster, forecasting weather conditions in southwest Virginia on WSLS 10 News from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays on Virginia Today.