Since the beginning of September, Charleston has been hit with 3.75 inches of rain. 

This is a drastic change from the dry summer Charleston residents have been used to.

Cameron Craig, a geographer and climatologist at Eastern, said the amount of rain Charleston has received for this month is above the 30-year average for the entirety of September.

“We’ve gotten all the rain we need for September in the first five days of the month,” he said. “Our drought situation has improved greatly.”

Craig said Charleston has moved from “extreme” to “moderate” on the drought scale.

“Hurricane Isaac really helped us out significantly,” he said. “For the rest of the month, we’re looking at above normal temperatures and above normal precipitation as well.”

David Crockett, the interim director of Facilities, Planning and Management, said the crew was hard at work as the rain poured down.

“We had some minor flooding in the southeast corner of the (O’Brien) stadium in some of the coaches’ areas,” he said. 

Crockett said they discovered an abandoned electrical conduit from the stadium project with the new track.

“We had some water infiltration and we’ve been working to clean that up and digging down on the outside of the building to cap that conduit and seal it from the inside as well,”

 he said.

Crockett said going from extremely dry weather to periods of extensive rain can make roofs unstable, and that was one of the things FPM was working to maintain.

“A lot of times we have roof leaks like this because with this exceptionally hot and dry summer, what we see is some of the older roofs can crack and it’s just a function of the intense heat and being older,” he said. “With a million and a half square feet of roofing on campus, there’s just no way to know that until it rains.” 

After rain like that occurs, he said the roofing crew works to repair the roofs of buildings quickly.

“We did all that work, and the rest of it was mostly just little drips here and there with windows,” he said. “Luckily, it wasn’t anything significant.”

Crockett also said a roof drain in McAfee Gym was found to be leaking, but has since been repaired.

Aside from the few minor leaks, Crockett said all of the recent constructions on buildings like Life Sciences Building held up quite well.

“We didn’t have any flooding (in the Life Sciences Building) and that was part of what we were trying to accomplish there,” he said. “We still have a lot of grass to grow, but the new drainage system that was put in helped out tremendously and we’re happy we had some good results there.”

Robyn Dexter can be reached 

at 581-2812 or redexter@eiu.edu.