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Just 7 sunny days and many rainouts

Thursday, June 05, 2003

By Mackenzie Carpenter, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

If the Pirates and their fans were disappointed by Tuesday night's rainout with the Boston Red Sox, just consider the plight of Jeff Rosenthal, commissioner of the 14th Ward Baseball Association in Squirrel Hill.

	Online graphic Rainy Days in May

Thanks to May's unusually rainy weather, he said, "I have some teams who need to make up five games, and the season ends in two weeks." Rosenthal oversees about a dozen Little League teams as well as minor and intermediate programs. "I just wish June had seven weeks in it. This is unbelievable, the worst year I can remember, and I've been doing Little League for 15 years."

Scott Robbins, whose 13-year-old son plays in a recreational baseball league in the North Hills, said so many makeup games have been scheduled that his son was forced to play Sunday night at 8:15, when the temperature was 39.

"At least my wife and I were working the concession stand, where it was a little warmer," he said.

Sports aren't the only activities being affected by the weather that made last month one of the wettest on record. Gardeners are watching with dismay as the cool rain rots roses and stunts the growth of such heat-loving herbs and vegetables as basil and tomatoes. It's also forced the cancellation of Kennywood Park school outings and halted construction of swimming pools.

"Our pool bottoms need to dry out but [they] can't because we're getting that rain cycle every two days," said Mike Papik, who runs Alpine Pools of Wexford.

"It's terrible," muttered Randall Kolson, a partner in Aqua Pool, an East Pittsburgh company that has watched the bad weather crimp everything from excavation to putting a final coat of plaster on the pool's shell. "But I tell my customers that this is all just a temporary inconvenience for a permanent pleasure, and most of them are patient and understanding about it."

On the bright side, the wet weather has boosted attendance at movie theaters, said Jennifer Hansen, spokeswoman for the National Amusements chain, which owns three Showcase multiplexes locally. National box office receipts hit a record $201.8 million over Memorial Day weekend, and "the weather was certainly a factor in that," she said.

So how rainy has it been? It was the ninth-wettest May on record, according to Jeff Warner, a meteorologist at Penn State University, with rainfall 2.34 inches over the normal precipitation amount. It was cool, but not the coldest May on record: That was 1997, when it averaged 54.2 degrees, compared with this year's 59.1 degrees.

Still, "We've had a dull month of May," said Warner, noting that only seven days of 31 had sunshine. The bad weather has even been boring, with far fewer thunderstorms than normal for this time of year, he added.

And the dullness, he said, will continue well into June, normally a month of graduations, weddings and award ceremonies.

The meteorological explanation for what's going on is that the jet stream has been running farther south than normal, resulting in more precipitation and lower-than-normal temperatures in much of the country since October.

In Chicago on Monday it was 38 degrees, the lowest recorded temperature for the date since 1879. May in Nashville, Tenn., was the second-wettest since 1871, with 10.73 inches of rain, more than double the average. Miami got 11 inches in May, twice its average. Atlanta had 9.94 inches, breaking the record for the month set in 1923.

North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee all had their second-wettest May on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Alabama, Ohio and Maryland had their third-wettest May in the 109 years of record-keeping.

Many baseball and softball leagues are cramming makeup games alongside playoff and all-star games, and there's talk of not just doubleheaders, but maybe tripleheaders, "although I hope it doesn't come to that," said Joe Howell, head of the Sacred Heart Baseball and Softball League.

Randy Frankel, director of the Squirrel Hill Baseball League, is still kicking himself for pushing back the starting date of his league's season by two weeks, to April 25.

"It's notoriously rainy in April, so we thought we were doing ourselves a favor, but April was actually better this year than May." Now, close to 30 games -- out of 160 scheduled -- have been rained out, he said.

Frankel has purchased nearly 100 50-pound bags of Terra Green, a drying agent that can be spread on playing fields to soak up excess water. Sales of the stuff have been booming, said David Guerin, co-owner of E.H. Griffith Inc. in Swissvale. "We've been selling three times the amount we normally sell," he said. "Of course, we'd rather see the sunshine."

Dirt that was removed from Heinz Field earlier this year -- for failing to anchor the sod correctly -- has proven a lifesaver for the 14th Ward fields at Forbes and Braddock avenues. The dirt, which was provided by the city, has absorbed water beautifully in the infield, which is prone to erosion in wet weather, said Rosenthal.

"Grass couldn't grow on it, but it's an amazing surface, and our fields are in much better shape than they would be ordinarily," he said.

While the rain has dampened spirits in some places, the folks at Munhall-West Homestead Baseball Association remain unfazed.

"We've been managing pretty well," said Joyce Hanna, treasurer of the association, noting that during Saturday's stormy weather, the association, which fields 25 teams, got in four games at two smaller fields that are covered with tarps. On Saturday night, the group's Troutman Field "was looking like a sheet of glass with all the water," Hanna said, but on Sunday, parents of players were up early at the field, raking the water off so that by 10 o'clock it was ready for a full day of Pony League play.

"Now that's dedication," she said. "Our guys won't let something like rain keep us from playing ball."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Mackenzie Carpenter can be reached at mcarpenter@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1949.