Dry early summer in Upstate.JPG

(Drew Montreuil)

Trumansburg, N.Y. -- Mayor Marty Petrovic hasn't mowed his lawn for weeks. Corn is drying up in the fields around this village, tucked between Seneca and Cayuga lakes, and plants that show signs of stress every decade or so are showing it now.

"It's really dry," Petrovic said.

He's right. Trumansburg is the driest spot in Upstate New York, according to data from the NOAA Regional Climate Centers. From June 1 through July 10, Trumansburg, in Tompkins County, has had less than a half an inch of rain. To be precise: 0.43 inches.

Many parts of the Finger Lakes and Western New York have seen an inch or less of rain in the past six weeks. Areas in the Adirondacks and Catskills, by contrast, have been soaked with up to 8 inches from June 1 through last weekend.

The reason: There's been little in the way of long, soaking rainfalls. Instead, Upstate New York has been bombarded by lines of thunderstorms, which drench some areas and bypass others.

Those storms have bypassed Trumansburg, Petrovic said.

"You can see them 10 miles to the north and 10 miles to the south, but they just miss us," he said. "It would be nice to get a nice steady rain, but we''ll take anything now."

Some areas of the Finger Lakes are close to record-low rainfall, said Samantha Borisoff, a climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University. The Cornell weather station is in its third-driest early summer stretch on record, Borisoff said.

Typical rainfall amounts Upstate are about 3 to 4 inches a month in summer.

A quick thunderstorm can reverse fortunes. Syracuse was one of the driest spots in the state until a thunderstorm dropped nearly an inch in an hour last Friday. The rain fell so fast the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning.

That same day, Buffalo got just 0.03 inches.

The rainiest Upstate location since June 1 is Walton, in Delaware County, with 8.33 inches. More than half of that fell on one day.

As of late last week, more than 90 percent of New York state was considered abnormally dry or in a moderate drought. Things could get worse this week, as the hottest temperatures of the year help dry things out.

Sections of Cayuga County have an an inch or so. That's worrying farmers, said Skip Jensen, Cayuga County Farm Bureau field adviser. "A lot of row crops like soybean and corn and really stressed and really need some water," Jensen said. "I don't think at this point all is lost, but we do need some substantial rain this week or very soon." Here's a selected list of the driest spots in Upstate New York. Some of these sites are monitored by individuals who might not be able to measure every day, so we allowed up to five missing values. If we had limited that to just one missing value, the driest place would have shifted to the west: Hemlock, at the top of Hemlock Lake in Livingston County, had 0.70 inches.

Upstate NY rainfall, June 1 to July 10

Location Inches Trumansburg 0.43 Penn Yan 0.64 Hemlock 0.70 Aurora 0.79 Geneva 0.92 Batavia 1 Freeville 1.15 Canandaigua 1.16 Niagara Falls 1.18 Watkins Glen 1.31 Buffalo 1.4 Ithaca 1.42 Auburn 1.52 Cornell University 1.54 Rochester 1.73 Lockport 1.97 Buffalo Area 2.06 Dunkirk/Chautauqua 2.22 Syracuse 2.92 Binghamton 3.33 Watertown 3.92 Plattsburgh 4.69 Fulton/Oswego 4.7 Saranac Lake 4.96 Albany 5.17 Lake Placid 5.5 Saratoga Springs 5.5 Tupper Lake 7.77 Cooperstown 8.23 Walton 8.33

Source: NOAA Regional Climate Centers

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