June 21: Drying Out
As expected, Upper Michigan has experienced an active weather pattern lately. That has led to some big rains. Two distinct systems produced the wet weather. The first one on Monday dumped the most rain over eastern and southern sections. Gladstone had over two inches, Newberry almost two-and-three-quarters and Rexton, in the far eastern U.P., had 3.61 inches late Monday afternoon.
Last night’s front generated heavy rain over the western half. Roughly from West Ishpeming westward, over an inch of rain was common. Here are some totals from west to east and consequently, from heaviest to lightest:
Thousand Island Lake: 3.50
Calumet: 2.11
Copper Harbor: 2.01
West Ishpeming: 1.20
NWS: 0.75
Gladstone: 0.53
Newberry: 0.20
Manistique: 0.19
We really needed the rain and, fortunately, no one location had too much at one time. That was no the case farther west, where historic rains hit Duluth. The National Weather Service office there tallied 7.24 inches, with the majority of it falling in less than 24 hours. Severe damaged to the city’s infrastructure resulted (Image 1 above). Some areas around the hillside city had 10 inches of rain. The flooding was devastating but not unprecedented. Ironically, forty years ago at this time, a similar situation brought severe damage to the city’s infrastructure (Image 2 above). That same system brought heavy rain across the U.P., but like this year’s version, the greatest deluge was on the west end of Lake Superior.
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