Thursday's Internet Edition, September 02, 2010.

A 24-hour rainfall of 1.48 inches was measured at 7 a.m. Saturday at the Spencer water filtration plant.

That came after just over half an inch (.51) total rainfall in the second half of June.

“The last two weeks of June we just got enough to settle the dust,” Will Miller, an operator at the water plant, said.

There was no measurable rain in the first nine days of July.

Miller said the dry spell has not had any major impact on the city’s water supply.

“We’ve got plenty of water,” he said.

He said the hot weather – the last four days before the hard rains saw daily high temperatures above 90° – can contribute to algae problems.

“But we can treat for that,” Miller said. “It’s nothing we can’t handle.”

He said water usage was up during the hot spell, with a total of 1.1 million gallons treated on July 10 alone. The Spencer plant also treats water for customers on the Clover and Reedy water systems.

He estimated that amount was about one-third higher than normal usage.

“It’s pretty typical for hot weather,” he said. “People are using a lot of water.”

Sam Sheets of the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service office in Spencer said the dry weather was having an impact on farmers.

“I don’t know whether it’s a drought or not, but it’s dry,” Sheets said.

Sheets said there was an abundance of rain in May and early June, which forced many farmers to finish their first cutting of hay later than normal.

“If they were able to get their first cutting in early June, we would have had a good second cutting,” he said. “But for most farmers, it was the last of June before they got their first cutting made. That will have an impact on the second cutting.”

The eastern mountain region of West Virginia is the only part of the state considered abnormally dry, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor (on the Internet at drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html) maintained by the USDA and other agencies.

The rest of the state is listed as normal.