About halfway through 2019, rainfall totals are above the yearly average, and local recreation areas are paying the price.
To date, the Bradford area has received approximately 23.16 inches of precipitation according to Weather Underground, a commercial weather service that aggregates data from the National Weather Service and personal weather stations.
That’s higher than last year’s total at this point of 19.08 inches, and also higher than the historic average of 19.89 inches through June.
Of the 23.16 inches this year, 15.56 inches of precipitation have come in the months of April, May and June.
The result?
Local parks are struggling to keep up with routine maintenance, and are experiencing problems beyond that, too.
According to Linda Devlin of the Allegheny National Forest Visitors Bureau, the ANF’s indoor activities, such as the Kinzua State Park’s museum, are experiencing higher numbers because tourists are looking for indoor activities to escape the weather.
However, outdoor recreation is taking a hit, as the ANF is seeing less campers, and in general, fewer people are looking to go outdoors for things such as fishing and wildlife spotting during rainy weather.
That’s not the biggest problem, though, according to Ed Prince of ANF site management.
“You’re going to have less campers when it’s raining,” he said. “And not only do we have less campers, the ones we do have are kind of miserable. They’re getting a muddy site that may need gravel.
“The problem is, there’s just too much water.”
That water and rain have put ANF maintenance workers behind schedule, because they’re constantly playing catch-up with duties such as mowing. In addition, continued rains and standing water make it difficult for crews to even address the problems in the first place.
“Our mowing crews get behind, and our equipment gets stuck in the mud and gets beat up,” Prince said. “It’s harder to get our job done, because it’s growing up quicker and faster.”
In addition, maintaining clean swimming areas is a much tougher job, because the public water areas are filling with run-off waters, which are full of contaminants.
“It’s just like a stream,” Prince said. “There’s obviously more bacteria in a brown stream than a clear one. All that run-off creates problems for our beach samplies and our water systems. It’s not that our water is bad, it’s that we’re getting run-off continuously.”
The ANF isn’t the only area taking a hit, either. Sinnemahoning State Park, located right on the border of Potter and Cameron counties, was forced to close its lake access for a few days this week to clear debris from the area after the latest round of storms.
Is there an end in sight? Time will tell, but historically precipitation totals taper off as the area approaches fall.
Last year was an exception to that rule, though.
The average rainfall total for the months of July and August are 4.19 and 3.99 inches, respectively. Last year, the month of July was just barely above average with a total of 4.32, but August was nearly a full inch above its average with 4.94 inches totaled.
September was also well above its average of 3.92 inches, as last year the area received 5.18 inches of rain that month.
Bradford and its outdoor recreation areas may have hope of escaping the rains, but recent trends may suggest another wet summer full of challenges.
