Swampscott weather watcher keeps tabs on stormy summer

SWAMPSCOTT – North Shore residents are all too aware this has been an unusually wet summer and one Swampscott resident has the numbers to prove it.Joe Balsama, a retired Swampscott High School science teacher and an amateur meteorologist, has been keeping a close eye on the weather.Balsama, who has rain gauges and other meteorological instruments in his backyard, said he has been tracking the weather since 1969. At his Swampscott home, Balsama said it rained 14 days in June and he measured a total of 3.67 inches of rain that month. He said in July it rained 13 days and he measured a total of 6.49 inches of precipitation in July.”It’s very, very unusual,” he said. “This is one of the wettest summers I remember.”Balsama said between Aug. 1 and Aug. 12 it rained eight days and he measured a whopping 4.06 inches of rain at his home.”My garden is ruined because of the heavy rain,” he said. “The most rain we got in the shortest period was between Aug. 8 and Aug. 9. We got 2.91 inches in those two days. It’s very unusual to get that much rain in two days. We usually only get that much for the whole month of August.”Balsama said the region has received record rains because of the cold air in the upper levels of the atmosphere.”The simple explanation is when the sun heats the ground and the hot air rises and meets cold air it causes rain,” he said. “The jet stream is bringing very cold air down from Canada. Usually this time of the year the jet stream stays way up north in Canada. The jet stream doesn’t usually bring the cold air this far south in the summer.”Balsama said he doesn’t know why the jet stream is dipping down into New England this year but he said the frequent and violent thunderstorms are a direct result of it.”When hot air meets cold air you get thunderstorms,” he said. “I’ve checked the thunderstorms for July and we’ve had more in July this year than in any July since I’ve been keeping record. I looked at old records and couldn’t find a July with more thunderstorms than we’ve had this year.”Balsama worked for the public schools from 1958 through 1998 when he retired as the head of the Science Department.He became interested in weather when he was a child and, when he first started teaching, he spent several summers working for the weather service as a field aide”My grandmother used to be able to look at the sky and predict storms and the weather,” he said.