Perhaps the Maglab was distracted by all the rain dances and pleadings for precipitation.
The capital city and a parched north Florida got it’s wet wish and saw a proper soaking overnight Friday and into Saturday afternoon.
And it was good enough for the record books, albeit a daily one with 1.83 inches of rain recorded on May 2.
“We had more rain today compared to any May 2 in the climatological record,” Jasmine Montgomery, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told the Tallahassee Democrat.
With 2.39 inches of rain, it was also the wettest May 2 in recorded history for Apalachicola.
Over the two-day stretch, Tallahassee saw 2 inches of rain, but Cairo, Ga., and Chipley were the big winners with 3.94 inches and 3.62 inches respectively.
The records comes as north Florida finds itself in an exceptional drought, one of its worst dry stretches in decades. That’s led to plenty of wildfires around the state and jokes and memes about the Maglab, which is said in jest to have the power to ward off storms.
“Someone turn off the Mag Lab! We need this rain!” one person wrote on Facebook this week as earlier rain chances failed to materialize.
“If this damn MAG-LAB makes this rain turn or fizzle out… somebody go turn that sumbi… OFF! ASAP!” another person wrote.
To be clear, this wasn’t a drought buster. Before the recent rains, the Tallahassee area would need to see about 20 inches of rain over the next two months.
The next chance for rain is looking like Thursday, but don’t expect it to have the magnitude of today’s rains.
So maybe the Maglab need to keep its shields down till hurricane season.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: How much did it rain in Tallahassee? Enough to break a daily record
Reporting by William L. Hatfield, Tallahassee Democrat / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
