GRAY (AP) – If April showers bring May flowers, the spring bloom should be a doozy in Maine.

Many cities recorded double the average rainfall for April, according to the National Weather Service. Portland recorded 8.3 inches, the third wettest in 135 years, and Bangor received 6.19 inches, or double its monthly average.

“There were several heavy rainfall events that occurred at different parts of the month, and it was unusual to get this much. That’s for sure,” said Vic Nouhan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray.

Nouhan said rainfall was also far heavier than normal in northern Maine. Caribou received 6.9 inches, making it the wettest April since the weather service began keeping records in 1939. The northern Maine city has an average of 2.6 inches in April.

And coming on top of a substantial snowpack leading into April, warmer temperatures that quickly thawed the state’s rivers and heavy spring rains that followed, most agree that conditions were perfect for flooding.

So why wasn’t it worse?

“That’s a good question. It is perhaps the fact that it didn’t all come at one time or within one week,” Nouhan said. “But there was some flooding.”

For much of April, the Maine Emergency Management Agency and the weather service feared the worst as the state’s rivers and streams rose quickly.

Some waterways including the Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers rose above their banks and displaced about a dozen families, but damage was limited.

Forecasters predict a dry week, which has left emergency management officials who kept a riverside watch through April saying it couldn’t have come soon enough.

“I can’t tell you what one more inch of rain would have done and how devastating the flooding would have been,” said Art Cleaves, director of MEMA. “But certainly we dodged a bullet by just that much.”

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On the Net:

National Weather Service • http://www.erh.noaa.gov/er/car/

Maine Emergency Management Agency • http://www.state.me.us/rfac/