June

As you saw above, it was the 4th wettest June on record, but for many Central New Yorkers, it was THE wettest month they'll ever remember. The month started off active with some heavy, soaking rain south of Utica. West Exeter picked up over an inch and a half in an hour on the 1st. Another widespread rain occurred on the night of the 2nd into the 3rd. Then some pleasant weather arrived for the 5th and 6th.

Then, in a strange turn of events, a nor'easter developed delivering us some light rain, but more heavy rain for New England:

Another dose of rain arrived for the 9th. Interestingly enough, we go from record highs to record low highs. The 10th and the 11th didn't see temperatures escape the low 50s, with clouds, breezes and light rain. We finally got back on track on the 13th. But by the 14th, just under another inch of rain fell on parts of Otsego County. Sun, clouds and periodic thunderstorms occurred between the 15th and the 24th. On the 17th, one band of thunderstorms dropped in from the North Country delivering a fair amount of heavy rain to parts of the area, east of Utica.

Then the benchmark of weather events in 2006 occurred. We had started warning people about 3-4 days in advance that things looked primed for a significant rain event during the week of the 26th. Here are the weather maps from various levels of the atmosphere for June 25th-28th from Penn State University.

June 25
June 26
June 27
June 28

A combination of a stalled out cold front, a weak tropical system and strong southerly winds driving in Gulf and Atlantic moisture set the stage for epic flooding from the Virginias through New York. Here's a map of rainfall in CNY from the NWS in Binghamton:

(Click to enlarge)

There are numerous web pages devoted to this event, so here's a list of some:

CNY Rainfall Totals from SkyWatchers
Dozens of Photos from Viewers
Flood of 2006 Home Page, with links to archived WKTV stories
NWS Albany page with statistics, maps and info
NWS Binghamton page with statistics, maps and info
NWS Mount Holly (Philadelphia) page with rain stats
NWS Sterling (Washington, DC) PDF file with pictures and information
Wikipedia Article
Oneonta Daily Star Web Page with Photos and Info
Albany Times Union Web Page with Photos and Info
Delaware County Government Website with Photos and Info

Needless to say, this event will be the benchmark of flood events down the road for much of CNY. Many areas to this point have still not fully recovered.

We saw little reprieve as the month ended with scattered thunderstorms, some of which dumped heavy rainfall across parts of the area.

They also have an image showing how far off of normal the month was.