June is Minnesota’s wettest month, and this year it lived up to its billing in spades.
So much rain fell in June that rivers across the state jumped their banks and massive flooding swept away homes, drowned downtowns, swamped parks and farm fields, and closed roads.
Though rain fell on 16 of the month’s 30 days, the 7.27 inches recorded at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as of Sunday morning didn’t set any precipitation records in the Twin Cities. Not by a long shot.
As soggy as June was, totals in the rain bucket at the Twin Cities official weather observation station made this year only the 14th wettest June on record, well off the all-time mark of 11.67 inches from 1874, according to Minnesota State Climatology Office.
In southern Minnesota, however, high-water records were set in Windom, where 14.58 inches of rain fell, breaking the previous mark of 11.06 inches that had stood since 1914. Even more fell in Wells, in Faribault County on the Iowa border, where 14.94 inches set a record, besting the previous high of 12.58 set in 2013.
Owatonna entered the record books, too, with its 13.13 inches. But no place may have seen more rain this past month than Faribault. There, the 16.63 inches of rain smashed the old mark of 12.96 set in 2014 and is believed to have been the highest total of any of the National Weather Service’s reporting stations.
Many other cities made it into double-digit rainfall, according to readings turned in to the Weather Service by volunteer observers.
Typically, the Twin Cities sees about 4.58 inches of rain in June, but this year brought about 2.8 inches more than normal. And it probably seems like more after last year when a paltry 0.93 inches of rain fell during the year’s sixth month, Minnesota Climatology Office data shows.