BENTONVILLE -- Last year strikes Ryan Anglin as one of the wettest he remembers in his 50 years of farming.
"When you get old, you start to forget things, but it has been wet," he said with a laugh.
Data from various weather reporting stations show 2019 was one of the wettest recorded in Benton and Washington counties.
Benton County issued a 24-hour burn ban last week, but Anglin, a third-generation family farmer, said his fields still had water in them from last year. The Anglin beef and dairy farm is in Benton County between Centerton and Highfill.
"It's been devastating," Anglin said of the rain. "I can't get into the fields."
Wheat planting he would have done in October or early November will be replaced by oats planting in the coming months, he said.
American farmers reported being unable to plant on some 19 million acres for all crops in 2019 with more than 70% of those acres occurring in the rain-soaked Midwest, according to a November New York Times report.
A monthly drought map of the United States released Dec. 31 by the National Weather Service shows a small part of southwest Arkansas as the only area of the state in drought conditions.
The rain total for 2019 at Drake Field in Fayetteville was 65.26 inches, 18.5 inches more than 2018, according to the National Weather Service in Tulsa, Okla.
Twelve inches of rain was recorded in October at Drake Field. Rain lashed the two-county area Oct. 6. The National Weather Service said 3 to 8 inches of rain, with isolated amounts up to 12 inches, fell before 5 p.m. across Benton and Washington counties.
The average annual rain for the two counties is about 48 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
Drake Field recorded 65.71 inches in 2015. The next year with a rain total of more than 60 inches at the airfield was in 1993 with 62.57 inches. In 1990, 75.01 inches of rain was measured at Drake.
Northwest Arkansas National Airport in Highfill received 65.49 inches of precipitation last year, according to data collected by the weather service. In 2018, the total was 42.68 inches at the airport.
Steve Chyrchel has taken daily rain measurements at Hobbs State Park near Rogers for the last 30 years. The 30-year average, annual total at the park is 46.98 inches, but 63.39 inches was recorded last year. It was the second highest recorded in the 30 years, topped only by the 72.87 inches in 2008, Chyrchel said.
David Wright, Bentonville Parks and Recreation director, said last year's rain was a double-edged sword. The ample rain meant the city didn't have to spend as much time, money and resources for watering. Problems occurred when buckets of rain fell over a short period of time. That meant lots of debris cleanup along city trails, he said.
Some outdoor summer programs also ran longer to accommodate schedules upended because of rain, he said.
"It was wet, but that doesn't mean it was all bad," Wright said of 2019. "It was timely and spread out. It was 70% good and 30% more challenging."
Rain at Beaver Lake as measured at a gauge near the dam was 50.54 inches in 2019, a 38.1% increase over 36.59 in 2018, according to the Army Corps of Engineers in Little Rock. Rain across the entire Beaver Lake watershed was 60.79 inches in 2019, a 37.1% increase over 44.35 in 2018, according to the corps.
Keith Brashers of Rogers has fished the lake since he moved to the area in 1984. He said there was noticeable difference in the water level last year. The lake has a dam and the corps controls the water level.
"It stayed higher longer than normal," he said. "By summer it's usually down to normal pool, but they never got rid of it." The gates at the dam were open in late December to drop the lake to its normal surface elevation of about 1,120 feet.
The area forecast for the first three months of 2020 show the precipitation probability as normal, according to the Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Md.
NW News on 01/12/2020