Barry’s 14.58” of Rain in Arkansas Breaks All-Time State Record

Above: Flooding in southwest Arkansas on July 16, 2019 from Tropical Depression Barry. Image credit: Brandon Clement via weather.com.

Update: Dierks, Arkansas reported a 24-hour rainfall amount of 16.17" July 15 - 16, 2019, from Tropical Depression Barry, with an additional 0.42" falling during the previous three days, potentially from Barry. The storm total of 16.17 - 16.59" thus establishes a new all-time state record for rain from a tropical cyclone.

Rainfall from Tropical Depression Barry deluged southwest Arkansas over the past three days, with the 14.58” that fell at Murfreesboro on July 14 - 16 breaking the all-time state record for precipitation from a tropical cyclone. Barry’s heavy rains that fell over southwest Arkansas inundated multiple highways, including I-30, and prompted four high-water rescues, according to weather.com. The heaviest rains from Barry have been in Louisiana, though, with 23.58” at Beauregard.

Gurdon Flooding @KATVNews pic.twitter.com/yCII1ZUGLw

— Brian Emfinger (@brianemfinger) July 16, 2019

On Tuesday, the heavy rains of Barry reached all the way into Michigan--a state unaccustomed to seeing tropical cyclone impacts. Heavy rains obscured visibility on I-96 north of Ann Arbor, causing a 40+ car pile-up that injured six people, and over 4” of rain fell in less than two hours at stations in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti--not far below the all-time state tropical cyclone precipitation record of 6.07” set in 1961 from Hurricane Carla.

For the third consecutive year, a mainland U.S. state has reportedly set a new record for wettest hurricane (since 1950). I've color coded by decade; of note, 11 of the Lower 48 States have set a new record since 2000. pic.twitter.com/PxDh1sizej

— Steve Bowen (@SteveBowenWx) July 17, 2019

Five all-time state precipitation records broken in the past two years

Barry’s rainfall record in Arkansas is the fifth state all-time tropical cyclone precipitation record to fall in a span of less than two years, which is a pretty remarkable pace of record-breaking, since all-time state records are difficult to break. Just last year, slow-moving Hurricane Florence shattered the state precipitation record for both North Carolina (35.93”) and South Carolina (23.63”), and Category 5 Hurricane Lane broke Hawaii’s all-time record with 52.02” at Mountain View on the Big Island. Back in August 2017, Hurricane Harvey stalled over Texas and brought 60.58” to Nederland, Texas. This smashed the all-time record not only for Texas, but for the entire U.S. A total of 12 states have beaten their all-time tropical cyclone precipitation record since 2000.

Barry, Harvey, and Florence were all examples of slow-moving hurricanes that stalled near the coast, enabling them to dump record-breaking amounts of rain. As detailed in our Monday post, Slow-Moving Hurricanes Like Barry Growing More Common, slow-moving storms that stall near the coast have grown increasingly common in recent decades. While there has not yet been a scientific study formally linking this behavior to climate change, there is evidence that large-scale wind patterns that steer hurricanes are slowing down in the tropical Atlantic--behavior that we would expect to see as climate change causes the jet stream to weaken and shift more towards the pole.