This picture shows wind damage Saturday at the Hillsboro Cemetery.
Photo by Letcher Langston
Weather damage and high winds reportedly impacted the Highland County area over the Memorial Day weekend.
Dave Bushelman, director of the Highland County Emergency Management Agency, reported that there was some damage in multiple areas of the county.
“No, just the trees at the Hillsboro Cemetery, the one at the entrance to the YMCA there at Diamond Drive, and then there was a carport over at the Hi-Tec Center that was blown over and that’s about all the information that I received,” he said.
Bushelman also said that there were a few power outages “here and there” but that there was “nothing major.”
According to Visual Crossing, a website that reports multiple weather statistics, the Hillsboro area received wind speeds of 11 mph and gusts of 20 mph on Saturday, wind speeds of 18 mph and gusts of 26 mph on Sunday and wind speeds of 21 mph and gusts of 34 mph on Monday.
In other weather-related news, statistics from the National Weather Service (NWS) revealed that precipitation figures for the spring months of April and May have been significantly higher than average.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Online Weather Data system, Hillsboro received 4.75 inches of precipitation in April 2024. The data showed that this was higher than the average for the month, was 4.73 inches. That is lower, though, than the highest recorded accumulation for April, which was in 2011 with 11.63 inches of precipitation. This is the 10th-highest recorded accumulation for the month since the earliest record shown in 2000, with three other years not having recorded numbers.
For May 2024, the last few days of the month have not yet been recorded, so the month’s precipitation numbers have not been completely finalized. The data showed that Hillsboro has so far received 5.82 inches of precipitation in the month, which was higher than the average for the month of 4.73 inches. That was lower than the highest recorded precipitation count for the month, recorded in 2004, with that being 8.45 inches. This number would be the ninth-highest accumulation for May if the month ended now.
Overall, the average accumulation for a whole year is 47.64 inches of rain, according to the data, with 2024 above that average for the first five months of the year, now being at 20.24 inches, whereas the average year would be 19.85 inches.
Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.
