LEWISTON – With weather forecasters calling for rain through Memorial Day weekend, Mike Breton doubts he’ll get much sleep.
“I keep awake all night listening for the gurgling,” Breton said.
The heavy rain falling around his Mower Avenue home has turned his front yard into a river.
A Switzerland Road drainage ditch runs past his house and into a city storm drain where his front yard meets Mower Avenue. When the rains are heavy, as they have been a lot this spring, that ditch turns into a river.
“I have to watch that drain – all the time,” Breton said. “If one piece of plastic, a bunch of leaves or anything blocks that drain, it backs right up into my house.”
National Weather Service forecasters aren’t calling for much relief for Breton or other soaked property owners. Maine is sitting right under a closed low pressure system that’s cycling in Atlantic moisture.
“The pattern is kind of stuck,” said Art Lester from the National Weather Service’s Gray office. “It seems like all the cool air in the country is over New England, and it’s not going away.”
The weather service is calling for showers to continue through the Memorial Day weekend, with temperatures hovering in the 50s.
Such weather is seasonal, Lester said.
“Spring is probably the worst time to be in Maine,” he said. “If you want nice spring weather, don’t come here. You’re better off with somewhere south or west – anywhere you don’t have a big Atlantic Ocean full of 40-degree water right off your shore.”
But this spring has been wetter than normal, with 4.76 inches more of precipitation – a total of more than 23 inches of rain and snow since January.
Much of it came in April, when the weather service recorded 8.73 inches of rain, about 4.5 inches above normal, Lester said.
Staying home
Breton and his wife, Paula, bought their house last June and enjoyed a dry summer. They didn’t notice a problem until November, when wet snow clogged the drain. The ditch quickly filled up, turning his yard into a pond.
“We had to dig down 3 feet to get it to drain,” he said. “My wife was up to her waist in the water.”
The drain filled up again in February and in April, backing up and flooding the basement.
He’s keeping an eye on it now, waiting for the same thing to happen.
“I don’t go anywhere when it rains,” he said. “I stay home and keep an eye on it.”
Wet spring
Reported rainfall, Portland
• May 2005 (through midnight May 22): 2.91 inches.
• May average: 2.77 inches.
• April 2005: 8.73 inches.
• April average: 4.26 inches.
• March 2005: 4.81 inches.
• March average: 4.14 inches.
Source: National Weather Service
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