It might be hard to tell after several days filled with afternoon rainstorms, but Dallas County is one of the parts of the state that has had a dry year so far.

According to the National Weather Service, Selma has received 29.67 inches of rain so far this year. That number is far below the 46.54 inches received by this point last year, as well as the overall average by this time, which is 36.21 inches.

Mary Keiser, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Birmingham, said that while this year has been relatively dry, it is not by a drastic amount.

“The numbers are below average, but it is nowhere near a record,” Keiser said. “No part of Alabama is going through a serious or severe drought right now.”

Keiser said with a few heavy downpours, drier portions of the state could catch up to the average numbers.

“We haven’t had many strong fronts or tropical storms pass through the state this summer,” Keiser said. “We could get one or two of those systems to move through, and we’d be all caught up on precipitation.”

Rudy Yates, an agronomic crop expert with the Dallas County office of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, said that while Selma and other portions of the state have received less than normal amounts of rain for far this year, the state is not in a drought.

“It’s been sporadic this year,” Yates said. “I have seen some areas that have had plenty of rain and others, right down the road, that are really lacking.”

Yates works across 13 counties across the state, so he has seen locations with enough rain, and others with less than normal amounts.

“There are several places where we are already seeing corn field starting to dry out, meaning they could be harvested anytime,” Yates said. “Just this week, we were harvesting a field of corn in southern Hale County that is pretty dry, and we had big storms build up all around us, but we didn’t see one drop of rain.”

He said storms like those seen across the state this week — which have relatively small and have not moved much before dissipating — can explain how some areas have been so dry, and others have been wet.

“It’s normal for us to see afternoon thunderstorms with the heat of the summer, but there are just some parts of the state that haven’t seen even those storms,” Yates said.