In May, it’s way easier to count the days it didn’t rain — only four so far

May is almost over and the National Weather Service counts only four days all month when rain gauges stayed dry at Kansas City International Airport.

Four days when you had a chance to mow and probably did.

Four days, just four, when ants weren’t so compelled to march out of wet soil and romp on the kitchen counter. Four days — May 11, 12, 18 and 27 — when the patio umbrella could dry out.

Hard to gripe about a lush, green spring after recent years of local gardens being parched by June.

But do we prefer this — what’s shaping up to be the sixth wettest May since recordkeeping began in the 1870s?

“We call it growing season,” said Kelby Hellwig, a manager at Shawnee Mission Park, where the mowing crew got in a full day at midweek before rain fell again early Thursday.

“This year it’s growing, growing and growing.”

The grass, especially.

For fescue, Kentucky bluegrass and other cool-weather varieties that Kansas Citians planted long ago to replace gnarly native grasses, conditions this month could hardly have been better. With a touch more than 10 inches of rain since May 1, precipitation has been more than double the monthly average.

And yet daily high temperatures have held up — just a degree below average — with sunshine getting its licks in between the hours of cloud cover.

Forecasters see a respite from the wet weather for the next several days. Rains were expected to move out of the area early Saturday. The Missouri and Platte rivers, now at flood stages around Kansas City, probably will crest and begin dropping this weekend.

As leafy as everything looks now, too much moisture in clay soil has begun to strangle the root systems of some plants, said Dennis Patton, a horticulturalist for K-State Research and Extension in Olathe.

“We’re just beginning to see people coming in this week with plants that are wilting or yellowing,” Patton said.

“Essentially, some of these plants are suffocating. Roots require oxygen in the soil for plants to thrive. When water moves in, oxygen moves out.”

Water is moving into some basements too.

Because of the steady May rains, moisture has penetrated deep in the ground around home foundations. While any passing storm can leave puddles in basements that are prone to get wet, foundation contractor Gary Hook said recent rains have produced water issues in houses that usually stay dry.

“When that water table in the ground gradually starts to increase, as it’s been doing, our basements literally become pools waiting to fill up,” said Hook, of Foundation Recovery Systems.

“We’ve definitely seen an increase in the number of homeowners calling in,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘I’m used to having this little moisture in the corner. Now I have running water.’”

Insects, birds and bunnies are loving the hardy vegetation, though. Expect to see more and fatter creatures of all kinds than you noticed in dry summers past.

“Every insect out there is going to benefit from the extra rain,” said Mitch Shipman, owner of Blue Beetle exterminators, based in Brookside. “Spiders are going to get fat from eating more insects. They’ll be big mamas by the end of summer.”

Meteorologists say the soggy conditions aren’t due to anything exotic, such as El Niño or hurricanes churning up.

“We’re just in a wet pattern,” said Pamela Murray of the National Weather Service. “In a couple of weeks, it could shift to a dry pattern.”

She said the wet pattern is made wetter by moist air from the Gulf of Mexico mixing in with low-pressure troughs.

“That makes for an efficient rain producer,” Murray said. “Where another system might bring a half inch of rain, these systems are bringing an inch.”

Making that grass inch up as well.

Look around. There’s a ton of grass to be cut on boulevards, church lots, athletic fields.

About 6,000 people make money mowing and landscaping around Kansas City, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The mowing budget for Kansas City Parks and Recreation exceeds $2 million a year. At Swope Park this time of year, someone is mowing every day.

“They’re pretty much the same guys who plow the streets in the winter,” said Forest Decker, Kansas City’s superintendent of parks. “They fix our playground equipment. They paint buildings. They’re multitalented.”

Terry Concannon runs a Toro 4000 riding mower at Shawnee Mission Park. He and a partner, Scott Helm, can trim down the entire park in about 30 hours. On wet days they’ll sharpen blades, change the oil and make needed repairs to the park.

And on the four dry days of May? They were steering those Toros.

“We’ll finish a long day, slap each other on the back and say, ‘Man, we got some grass cut today,’” said Concannon, 65, a stout man with thick, tanned forearms and a crushing handshake.

“Sometimes it feels likes I’m mowing from Kansas City to Amarillo. Except when I’m finished, I’m back to where I started.”

This story was originally published May 29, 2015 at 7:27 PM with the headline "In May, it’s way easier to count the days it didn’t rain — only four so far."