Confluence Just Lived Through the Wettest August Since 1871
The region logged its wettest first half of August on record, with rain totals pushing toward the all-time August mark set in 1987.
If it feels like it has not stopped raining this month, that is because it very nearly has not.
Southwestern Pennsylvania is in the middle of one of the wettest stretches of weather the region has seen in generations. The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, which has kept records since 1871, confirmed the region logged its wettest first half of August on record, with nearly six inches of rain falling by mid-month, more than four inches above normal. By the third week of August, the total was pushing toward seven inches, within reach of the all-time August record of 7.86 inches, set back in 1987.
The rain came with company. The weather service also confirmed 30 tornadoes across the region in 2026, the most ever recorded here in a single year, edging out the previous record of 29 set in 2024.
None of that was an abstraction around Confluence. It was this same stretch of relentless rain that fed the flooding that tore through town on August 11, washing out roads and bridges.
A wet spring, a wet summer, and now the wettest start to August the weather service has ever logged. If the ground under your feet still feels like a sponge, you are not imagining it.
The back half of the month has offered a bit of a break, and the early outlook for September calls for something closer to normal. After a summer like this one, normal sounds pretty good.