PHOENIX — Monday marks the official end to Monsoon 2019, and it’s going down in the history books as one of the driest on record!
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where our official rain gauge is located, only picked up 0.66 inches of rainfall during the entire season, putting Monsoon 2019 in fifth place for Phoenix’s driest monsoon on record!
Other parts of our state ended up even worse.
It was the driest monsoon on record for Flagstaff, with only 2.08 inches of rain measured at the Flagstaff airport.
The Grand Canyon, Bellemont, Phantom Ranch, Show Low, and Teec Nos Pos in northeast Arizona all experienced their driest monsoon on record this year, too.
Monsoon 2019 was among the top five driest in spots like Bagdad, Page, Saint Johns, Seligman, and Winslow.
While we didn’t pick up much rain at our official Sky Harbor rain gauge, other parts of the Valley did end up with higher amounts of rainfall this season.
In Fountain Hills we measured just over 3.8 inches of rainfall for the season. We saw rainfall amounts near 3.5 inches in spots like Apache Junction and Mesa. We also picked up over three inches in Wittmann and Buckeye.
A big chunk of that rain fell in the final week of the monsoon, thanks to a surge in tropical moisture and a storm system that moved in from the northwest.
Unfortunately, Chandler was the biggest loser when it came to monsoon rain. Only 0.35 inches of rain was measured there during the entire season.
On average, Phoenix measures 2.71 inches of rain during the monsoon, which runs from June 15 to September 30.
The only spot that saw above average rainfall was Jerome, where they measured 7.34 inches of rain, 0.01 inches above the seasonal average for that location.
