With rain putting a damper on this year's May 24 festivities, it also filled the skies this past weekend. However, it appears that this abundance of rain is a bit over the normal average.

Meteorologist Mark Guishard of the Bermuda Weather Service said that so far the rainfall on the Island has been average. That it has not exceeded levels below or above the norm.

Last month the Island received a total rainfall of 5.4 inches. That is a 2.14 inches rise on May's average monthly rainfall of 3.26 inches from past years.

Mr. Guishard explained that this data is compared with data collected over a 50-year period.

He added that the lowest recorded rainfall was 0.28 inches, which was recorded back in the dry season of 1991. May reached its peak in 1997 when 11.7 inches fell.

On average, the Island receives 20.65 inches of rain coming at the end May. So far this year 21.61 inches have fallen. "So we're actually about an inch over the average right now," he said.

Two inches of rain fell this past weekend but Mr. Guishard said that was an occurrence that happened "by chance''.

"This can happen at any time, depending on if a big system moves through the Island at the time," he said.

He added that most times the systems are miles away from Bermuda, so we do not get as much rain as when the systems are directly over us.

As for the hurricane season, which began on June 1 and ends on November 30, Mr. Guishard said that it looks to be slowing down from past very active seasons.

"The hurricane season seems to be getting back to normal," he said.

This is due to the lessening affects of El Nino/La Nina and other weather systems.

There are ten storms predicted for this year by William Gray, Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.

Last year produced 14 named storms, eight of which became hurricanes with three attaining category three intensity or higher.

Normal hurricane seasons produce eight to eleven tropical storms. Five to seven of them reaching hurricane strength. While two to three of these hurricanes move onto becoming intense hurricanes.

The hurricane names for this year are: Allison, Barry, Chantal, Dean, Erin, Felix, Gabrielle, Humberto, Iris, Jerry, Karen, Lorenzo, Michelle, Noel, Olga, Pablo, Rebekah, Sebastien, Tanya, Van, and Wendy.