Spring deluges dampen work and play

Softball players should expect to start their summer season a little late this year, as officials can do nothing to control what’s causing the delay.
It’s not unlighted fields or less space. Rather, 23 full nights of the sport have had to be rescheduled so far this spring because of something much higher up — lots of rain.

“I’m about three-and-a-half weeks behind right now,” said Bernie Garrison, the athletic manager for Charlottesville’s Department of Parks and Recreation.
While April was generally on par with typical rain amounts, Charlot-tesville’s levels for May and the first half of June are measuring well above average.
Figures recorded at the University of Virginia’s McCormick Observatory show Charlottesville with 6.63 inches of rain in May, compared with the norm of 4.86 inches.
“It’s not that unusual to see fronts stall out like this,” said Jerry Stenger, the research coordinator for UVa’s Climatology Office.
He said those situations help direct unstable weather over the area. Why all of this is happening is harder to explain, as Stenger said the factors are “poorly understood” at best.

“It’s just worked out that we’ve been the recipients,” he said.
June is on track to exceed normal rainfall amounts as well. As of Wednesday, 4 inches had fallen this month, compared with an average of 2.53 inches. Stenger expects that if the trend continues, Charlottesville would see 7 inches this month.
“We have seen so far for June, out of the 17 days, we’ve had measurable precipitation on 12 of them,” Stenger said. That figure is about double of what he expected.
Coinciding with the rain, temperatures have been slightly cooler. And as a direct result, groundwater levels are climbing, mosquito problems are rising and a damper is being put on outdoor recreational leagues.
Earlier this week, the City Council received a report about mosquito control, with staff saying that the pests were causing more problems thanks to the rain. More rain leads to more stagnant water, a common mosquito breeding ground.
During a regular 64-night softball season, between 20 and 24 games are played each night. Many games this spring have already been rescheduled for July.

“Some of these games are crucial games,” Garrison said.
The situation that Garrison faces — he’s already tentatively pushed the summer season’s start back one week — is not entirely unique.
Don Dolinger, the recreational program coordinator for the Soccer Organization of Charlottesville-Albemarle, said that earlier this year, “I joked that this was the spring of no practices.”
The youth recreation program, which is for players aged 6 to 18, practices once a week, Dolinger said. Their weekly sessions started experiencing problems after March.
“On the upside, the volunteer coaches in the rec league, they were great about dealing with that situation,” he said.

But the rain isn’t all bad. Stenger said that groundwater levels have been slowly rising to higher amounts from below normal levels.
“We’ve had some dry conditions overall for quite some time,” he said. Rain amounts still are behind for the year — usually the area has seen an average of 21.8 inches by this point, but this year the figure stands at 19.7 inches, or about 91 percent of normal levels.
The recent downpours will help with water supplies, Stenger said.
The latest front should have moved out of town by today.

“We’ll see a shift to a situation where we have less continuous rain, higher daily temperatures, getting up well into the 80s and low 90s [that] would be more typical of late June,” Stenger said.
And as it gears up for the next season of its youth recreation program, Dolinger said he hopes the damp days do not repeat themselves quite as frequently.
“We’re going to take the optimistic view that the fall season can’t be as wet as this one was,” he said.