LITTLE ROCK, Ark.- Rainfall has not been a daily occurrence over the past 30-days but when we’ve had episodes of rainfall, the atmosphere has been abundantly generous.

A disturbance that came through in early to mid-August caused an axis of heavy rainfall to set up across portions of west-central Arkansas for several hours one morning. That was the beginning of such a large rainfall talley.

The rest of what lead to the totals you will see below came from the day before Laura, Tropical Storm Laura, and days after.

After Laura, the weather pattern over Arkansas allowed for a continuous supply of moisture to come in from the Gulf of Mexico and even the Caribbean. To our west, the flow set up aloft for a series of disturbances to move over the area to interact with that moisture and create some very efficient rain making thunderstorms.

West-central Arkansas was the area that observed the most rainfall out of anyone else in the state but as you can see, rainfall amounts were high for many this past month which is generally the time of year we see the least amount of rainfall.

To compare our 30-day rainfall totals, to what should be normally seen, this map below gives the percentage above that normal. As you can see, many locations exceed 200% with some at 600% above normal!

Below are reporting sites that have collected more than 10 inches of rainfall in the past 30 days. Most of these are in western Arkansas.

Mena is the area with the highest amounts. August 2020 went down as the wettest August ever recorded. Records date back to the late 1800s.

Also, so far this year, Mena has totaled 71.22 inches as of today’s date, September 2. That places 2020 in the top 15 wettest years on record for them. 2020 resides in the number 12 spot with room to go up as we have around 120 days to go this year.

The most rainfall ever recorded in a given year for Mena occurred back in 2015 when the total reached 89.93 inches.