August was the wettest ever in Cedar Rapids

With Cedar Rapids seeing its coolest July and wettest August ever, the summer of 2009 was... wait for it... cool and wet.

“You in Cedar Rapids really got nailed,” said Alan Czarnetzki, professor of meteorology at the University of Northern Iowa. “If you didn't get another drop of rain, you'd still be above average for the year.”

Eastern Iowa gardens will continue to show the effect of too much moisture and too little heat, said Iowa State Extension Master Gardner Deb Walzer of Cedar Rapids.

“Pumpkin vines are dying, and the pumpkins haven't even turned orange yet,” she said. “That may mean fewer pumpkins for the people that like big orange pumpkins.”

August rains rapidly brought much of the region's sweet corn to ripeness, leaving less late-season corn, Walzer said.

Walzer said tomatoes need nighttime temperatures in the 70s to ripen properly. That happened just twice this summer in Cedar Rapids (June 21 and Aug. 8), while excess moisture also left its mark.

“Tomatoes on the vine are so engorged with water they've split,” she said.

Even before the soggy August, it wasn't a year for hanging out at the pool.

“Last year we thought, ‘This was the worst,'” said Carolyn Hamilton, Cedar Rapids' aquatics manager. “Well, the worst was yet to come.”

August figures aren't yet available, but June and July attendance at the city's five public pools - Ellis Pool remains closed due to flood damage - was down 13 percent over the same period a year ago. The 124,500 visits through Aug. 1 was a whopping 29 percent fewer than in 2007, the last “normal” season, according to Hamilton.

“The bottom line is going to be in the daily admissions,” Hamilton said. With persistent cool weather, “those people didn't have much interest in swimming.”

Iowa City, where two of the three municipal pools are indoors, fared better. Program supervisor Matthew Eckhardt said June-through-August attendance was about 42,500, up 6,000 over last year and down only slight from 44,000 in 2007.

“Not as bad as I thought,” Eckhardt said after checking the figures this week.

Thanks to fees for swimming lessons and other activities, the pools' combined revenue through July was actually up 2 percent over 2008. But that's still down 14 percent over 2007.

Swimmers have one last chance this weekend. The Noelridge Aquatic Center in northeast Cedar Rapids will be open, and the forecast calls for clear skies and highs in the upper 70s.

“It'll be nice out, not too terribly warm,” said Hamilton. “We'll get some swimmers.”

There's no strong indication the cool weather will continue through fall, according to the National Weather Service. If he had to choose, Czarnetzki said he'd expect continued cooler-than-usual weather, based on “persistence forecasting.”

“It has been cool, so my forecast is that will continue,” he said. “For the past year I've been successful doing that, but eventually it's going to break.”