2009 Monsoon

I finally added up our rainfall for the 2009 monsoon.  Here's what it looks like:

June  0
July   1.92
Aug   1.24
Sep   0.94

TOTAL  4.10 inches

Once again, another dry monsoon.  Since 2000 we've had 2 extremely wet monsoons, 2 average, and 6 dry.  It looks like dry is becoming the new "average."

If we select only the past five years, we get:

05     3.12
06   11.90
07     4.32
08   13.25
09     4.10

Clearly, we've been alternating between wet and dry moonsoons.  Thus, we can confidently predict that next year will be a wet monsoon.  Just kidding.  You can't predict the future from past behavior.  If this were possible, everybody playing the stock market would be a millionaire.  Actually there would no longer be a stock market if everybody knew the future, because it would be like laying odds that the sun is going to rise tomorrow.

Putting this year in perspective, it was the 5th driest summer since I started keeping records in 1983.  Drier monsoons have totaled 2.83, 3.11, 3.12, and 3.53 inches.  So this summer was very dry, but not a record-breaker.  (Though the difference between 2.83 inches and 4.10 inches is about 15 minutes of heavy rain.)