Spring Is the Wettest Season in Parts of Waterlogged Tennessee, Mississippi Valleys

Meteorological spring began March 1, kicking off the wettest season of the year for a few areas of the United States.

Dr. Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, compiled the map above, showing which season is the wettest for each region of the country.

Spring, defined meteorologically as the three-month period from March through May, is wettest for the areas shaded in green on Brettschneider's map. This includes portions of the Tennessee and Mississippi valleys, where rainfall was excessive to start 2020.

The fact that spring is the wettest season for some of these same areas is concerning. A number of locations from Mississippi to the Smoky Mountains picked up over 10 inches of rain in February.

Starkville, Mississippi, crushed its previous record-wet February – 10.79 inches in 2003 – by almost 4 inches. It was the city's wettest winter month on record and sixth-wettest month of all-time in records dating to 1891.

February's heavy rain sent rivers into flood, including the Pearl River, which swamped homes as it crested at the highest level since 1983 in Jackson, Mississippi.

Spring is also the wettest season in portions of the lower Ohio Valley, Southern Plains, Great Basin and the Rockies of Wyoming and northern Colorado.

In many areas of the country, summer is the wettest season, due in large part to thunderstorms that frequently pop up as heat and humidity build in the afternoon.

Winter is the wettest season along the West Coast and in parts of the South inland from the Gulf Coast.

Fall the wettest season in eastern New England and along the eastern shores of the Great Lakes.

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