Keeping track of rainfall on both a current and historical basis is a topic that is often of interest to people involved in agriculture. While we have had abundant rainfall in Smith County during May and June (and now shaping up to be so in July) most of the soil types in the area do not store moisture for very long once conditions turn dry again.
The historical rainfall average for Smith County is around 45 inches of total precipitation a year. Historically, each month of the year brings between 3.5 to 4.5 inches of rain (with July and August being the exception at usually somewhere between 2 and 2.75 inches).
Our native plants and animals are adapted to this type of climate that traditionally only has around two months of the year where precipitation is lacking.
If you look at it from another perspective, with 52 weeks a year and an average of 45 inches of rain a year (based on a 45 year average of recorded precipitation in the county), this equates to about 23,500 gallons of water falling per acre per week (an inch of rain provides around 27,154 gallons of water per acre).
Two good weather sites for keeping track of current and historical rainfall in the Tyler area are the site at the Texas A&M University Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Overton (Rusk County) maintained by Indre Pemberton which can be found at http://overton.tamu.edu/weather and KTBB Radio Station in Tyler's Weather Archives maintained by Dr. Bob Peters which can be found at http://www.kdok.com/archives/
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