WEATHERING THE STORM
Jacket
Boots
Umbrella
Sunscreen
LOCAL INDUSTRIES ADJUST TO WETTER WEATHER The south-central Pennsylvania fashion trend for 2019 is galoshes and a raincoat. Are you ready? According to Dr. Tim Hawkins (right), professor of geography/earth science and campus weather guru, the 2018 calendar year was second wettest on record, registering 22 inches more precipitation than the average. In 2018, the Shippensburg area measured 62.53 inches—including rain, snow, and
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SHIPPENSBURG UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE
ice—while the average is about 40 inches. The area was not far from the 1996 record of 63.98 inches. Climate models indicate this is the new trend, Hawkins said. “Any given month was not particularly unusual, but it’s certainly been a wet year. This is exactly what the climate center predicts for this
area. We’re getting both warmer and wetter.” “It’s been gray and wet for a long time,” he said, and it’s making an impact on several regional industries. In December, Gov. Tom Wolf declared disaster relief funding for farms in fourteen counties, including Cumberland, as a way to get assistance for losses caused by excessive rain and flash flooding. “We never expected anything like this,” said Tricia Borneman ’97, organic farmer and owner of Blooming Glen Farm in Perkasie. Borneman has farmed for about twenty years, fourteen of them at Blooming Glen.
