Floods close out wet year in state 2015 saw most rain in 25 years

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS -- More than one-third of 2015's rain fell in just two months, May and December, swelling rivers and lakes, washing away roads and crops and generally making a muddy mess.

"It was the worst year I've ever seen in my life," said Dave Sargent, 75, a produce farmer near Prairie Grove who planted 100 acres of vegetables three times only to lose them to the deluge every time. "It was totally disastrous all the way through."

'Wave after wave'

The last time Fayetteville got so much rain was 1990, when a record 75 inches fell, according to the weather service. The city crossed the 60-inch mark only once between then and 2015. The service doesn't track annual data for other cities in the metro area.

Northwest Arkansas isn't alone in its soaking: parts of Arkansas south of Fort Smith and elsewhere approached 90 or even 100 inches, and the recent flooding has stretched across the Midwest and South.

"That just tells you the magnitude of the events that made up 2015," said Mike Teague, a meteorologist at the weather service's Tulsa office. "Obviously it's a huge departure" from normal.

The year started out relatively dry, with January, February and April bringing less than average precipitation in Benton and Washington counties. Then May hit with roughly a foot of rain spread throughout the month. Continual storms sent so much water to Beaver Lake, the region's drinking water reservoir, that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened its floodgates for the first time since 2011.

"We just had wave after wave where the systems produced big thunderstorms," Teague said. The high-speed, high-altitude ribbon of wind called the jet stream was oriented in such a way that it aimed those storms straight for the Arkansas area, he said.

Around the same time, unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean along the equator was building up, a phenomenon called El Nino. Prevailing winds from South America across the ocean slowed, allowing the ocean's surface water to bask in the tropical sun and absorb storm-feeding energy that would then ripple outward to affect weather worldwide.

One of El Nino's typical results is wet weather for the southern United States, and this year's is among the strongest ever recorded, according to NASA measurements.

Northwest Arkansas' rainfall actually faltered while El Nino built, with monthly rainfall again slipping below average in September and October. That turned around in November when twice the average rain fell.

Then came December. Eight inches or more fell from Dec. 26 to Dec. 28, with some areas' rainfall almost equal to all of May's during those three days. Storm water overflowed drainage systems, blocked highways and washed away several rural roads. The Beaver Lake gates opened again to 9.5 feet to deal with the influx, compared with a foot or less during the summer.

While the amount of rain was unusual, Teague said, it's normal for the year's precipitation to swerve up and down despite averages that might suggest otherwise.

"It's really not normal to be normal," he said.

Food and water

All of the year's water played havoc with many area farms, drowning and rotting plant roots and washing away fields. Sargent, who usually grows produce for area Walmart stores, estimated his losses at $300,000, about 42 percent of which will be covered eventually by federal crop insurance. Thousands of tons of "irreplaceable" topsoil washed away, he said.

"It's at Lake Tenkiller or somewhere down the Arkansas River, or maybe out in the ocean somewhere," Sargent joked.

He worried wacky weather like 2015's might become more common because of climate change, and pointed out growing populations and a dwindling farming force also strain the profession. But a farmer has to be an optimist, Sargent said.

"We had a severe drought in 1954, and I asked my dad what are we going to do. And he said, 'Well, we're going to go on,'" Sargent said, adding work for 2016 has already begun. "This year I plan to grow a lot more than I did last year."

So much rain can also be good news for some agriculture. Rain-soaked hay can't be cut until it's dry, but more rain also meant more hay, said Matt Shubat, who owns a hay and livestock business near Gentry with his wife, Ava.

The year's first hay cut was two months later than normal, but "we got way more hay than I think we ever have," Shubat said. The water encourages livestock parasites, meaning Shubat had to give his lambs and other animals anti-worm treatments twice as often. But he also sold twice as much hay to other farmers as usual.

"I think we did pretty well, personally," Shubat said.

The rainfall surged into the White and Illinois rivers and other streams, which often appeared opaque and brown from dirt and sand as they entered Beaver Lake and other lakes downstream. The murkiness complicates the purification process for drinking water, Beaver Water District officials have said, though it doesn't ultimately affect the tap water's quality.

Sediment and other pollution can also hurt fish and other life throughout the watersheds, said John Pennington, executive director of the Beaver Watershed Alliance.

The recent erosion can be disheartening, Pennington said, but he hopes the year's rain pushes farmers, landowners and developers to look into stream-side vegetation buffers, dirt road management and other ways to help reduce runoff. The alliance works with landowners and other groups to find those options and make them less costly.

"Our intent is to hold the line and prevent a decline in water quality," he said, adding monitoring and restoration take years of work. "I feel pretty positive, though, we're heading in the right direction, but yes, there is still a long way to go. We've got to giddyup."

Going forward

The 2015 El Nino's connection to climate change is murky; scientists generally hesitate to tie any one event to the gradual warming of the planet over the last century or so. Both processes are powered by heat, and two 2014 studies published in the scientific journal Nature found evidence strong El Ninos would happen more often as Earth warms.

Climate scientists broadly agree carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases released by the burning of coal and oil are the primary drivers of climate change. The gases catch and hold in more heat from the sun and have increased Earth's average temperature by 1.4 degrees since 1880, according to NASA -- a small increase on a given day, but a huge amount of extra heat over an entire planet.

The increase has already begun to acidify the oceans and throw ecosystems off kilter, and 2015 was the warmest year on record for the planet, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Northwest Arkansas spent most of the year with above average temperatures, according to the weather service.

But El Nino is also an expected, fairly regular part of a Pacific cycle that includes El Nino's opposite, called La Nina, and neutral conditions in between the two, Teague said.

"I'm not really confident that there's a direct correlation there," he said.

NASA expects the El Nino to continue in the first several months of 2016, according to a Dec. 29 news release, which could mean more wild weather for the U.S. But the weather service's three-month outlook forecasts about equal chances of more or less precipitation than average in Arkansas.

Teague said El Nino could fade by summer, and as it weakens, its direct impact wanes.

"The only real correlation is with strong signals; once those start to change and you get into more neutral conditions, then anything can happen," he said. On the other hand, recent activity in the Arctic could send colder weather this way in the coming weeks.

"That would probably be a decent bet," Teague said.

General News on 01/06/2016