Daniel Steigleman looks forward to the day he can get to class without getting soaked first.
“The rain makes it hard to ride a scooter,” the 19-year-old UF mathematics junior said. “It also makes it hard to do anything outside and even makes traveling less enticing.”
On Sunday, the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network announced that Gainesville has officially seen its rainiest summer ever. The city had record-breaking rainfall in both June and July.
“We’ve had a couple of different cold fronts coming down and then just some stalled weather systems that produced large amounts of rainfall,” said Cyndee O’Quinn, a meteorologist at the UF College of Journalism and Communications.
O’Quinn said Gainesville recorded 16.7 inches of rain in July, which beat the city’s past record of 16.65 inches of rain in 2013.
“We broke our all-time rainiest summer season before we even got into the month of August,” O’Quinn said. “So as of July 30 we have set a new record of 33.56 inches, and that broke our record by more than an inch back in 1965 of 32.55 inches.”
O’Quinn said the heavy rain has advantages, especially in stopping the drought Gainesville was experiencing earlier in the year.
“The drought actually ended back in June for every county in the state,” she said. “We are, I guess, refilling on some of the aquifers with the continuing heavy rainfall amount and the pattern does not look like it’s changing anytime soon.”
Although Gainesville is expected to see more rain today, O’Quinn said the rain is expected to move away from the area by Wednesday or Thursday.
Caroline Medelius, a UF environmental science and Russian sophomore, said she doesn’t mind the rain at all.
“I don’t think there are many negative effects of the record-high numbers,” the 20-year-old said. “If anything, the added water will result in Gainesville being more green, with less dry vegetation and a smaller chance of fires.”
Despite the rain, fans walk down the closed-off University Avenue to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Saturday afternoon for the UF Homecoming football game.
