New Word! February 14, 2004
reylang - There seems to be no one word for a prolonged period of above average rain fall, i.e., the opposite of a drought. I am proposing the word reylang - it is derived from rain and long. According to a check of the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary on Friday, February 13, 2004, at about 16:00 Eastern Standard Time (EST), the etymology for the word rain is:
Middle English reyn, from Old English regn, rEn; akin to Old High German regan rainand the etymology for the word long is:
Middle English long, lang, from Old English; akin to Old High German lang long, Latin longusWhile the above does not specifically include something to address the "above average rainfall" portion of the definition, that understanding is an implicit (perhaps implied?) part of the meaning.
Hence, above-average rainfall for a prolonged period of time is a reylang. Sometimes there are floods during a reylang. And if you believe the stories in many cultures of the Great Flood (search the web ...), then there was definitely a reylang that caused those!
We had a reylang here in central Virginia in 2003 when we had the wettest year since reliable record keeping began, which for some stations is more than 100 years. In my own local community (Charlottesville, Virginia), we had over 72.88 inches of rain. The former record here was 72.07, which was set in 1937 (source: http://climate.virginia.edu/advisory/2003/ad03-06.htm, February 13, 2004, 16:10 EST).
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