by Steven Felschundneff | steven@claremont-courier.com

The last few days of cloudy skies, rain and chilly nights brought back memories of our epic winter, which makes one wonder: how much rain did Claremont get?

Future precipitation notwithstanding, the season total, from October 1, 2022 to May 4, 2023, is a whopping 36.46 inches with a full inch falling in the early morning hours Thursday. That is nearly three times the normal rainfall of 13 inches received by this time of year. Remarkably, 28.41 inches of that rain fell since January 1.

Meanwhile, the reminders of the unusually wet winter are all around us. The Thompson Creek reservoir remains quite full and anyone who has been in the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park recently can attest that the seasonal creek at the bottom of the hill is still flowing.

The National Weather Service announced on Monday that a low-pressure system was expected to move down the state, bringing rare May rains and the possibility of two more inches of snow at elevations above 5,000 feet. Rainfall in the region was expected to hover around a half inch, but hillside communities like Claremont could get as much as an inch (which it turns out was true). Claremont could also see a thunderstorm or two over the course of the week.

The effects of the weather system were evident Thursday morning when the mercury hit a chilly 45 degrees after struggling up to 57 degrees by midday Wednesday. The National Weather Service said the temperatures would stay unseasonably cold all week.

The wet weather is expected to clear out by Friday, but the temperatures will remain cool.