John Wheeler: Spring and summer showers and storms produce huge variations in rainfall

FARGO — The showers and thunderstorms that produce most of the precipitation in our region from May through September tend to produce a lot more variation in precipitation from place to place than winter snowstorms. It is not unusual for a thunderstorm to drop an inch more rain on a location just a mile away from another. So please keep in mind that the rain reports we give are from specific locations and are not meant to represent the rainfall for an entire town or city.

We identify each report by the town, nearest town or, if a location is not really near a town, by the distance and direction from the nearest town. However, these reports are spot reports and may not represent the rain that fell on your yard. The rain reports we offer on the news are chosen in an attempt to show a general idea of the rainfall across the viewing area but are limited to the reports we get.