KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Who’ll stop the rain?
One of the wettest two-month periods on record is making work harder. Many people living in the metro have seen enough rain to last the entire year, and it’s become a wet blanket for people who have to work outdoors.
When work takes you into people’s yards, watching the weather feels like the turn of a screw.
Don Jackson knows it all too well. He’s been in the heating and air conditioning service industry for 18 years.
“Once it starts raining, most of the guys are at home,” Jackson said.
Jackson says weather keeps techs off the job because of the potential hazard. When electrical equipment, such as an HVAC unit, gets wet, it could be dangerous.
“You’re working on a 240 volt appliance and you’re standing in the wet grass,” Jackson said.
And when service pros like Jackson stay home, they don’t get paid. Jackson says his company, A.B. May, will dispatch as many as 50 trucks on an average day.
“You try to take care of as many people as you can when it’s raining,” Jackson said. “We’ve got a lot of calls scheduled for today. Those calls are going to have to be rescheduled.”
Air conditioning experts aren’t alone. National Weather Service data from Kansas City International Airport shows 18 inches of rain for the metro in the past two months. That’s more than half a year’s rainfall.
Lawn care professionals are feeling the bite too. When heavy rain comes to town, they have to work around the weather. Dr. Rodney St. John works as an agriculture expert with Ryan Lawn Care. He says it’s bad enough that soft ground is hard for service crews to navigate. He predicts the onslaught of rain could make problems for our plants.
“When it gets hot and dry here in August, we’re likely to see some plant damage on trees and grass just because that root system is so shallow from all this extra moisture,” Dr. St. John said.
Even local blood supplies are down, and the weather appears to be to blame. Andrea Boepple with the Community Blood Center says donations rise and fall, depending on weather conditions.
Boepple reminds everyone they’re still in need of blood, even when it’s raining.
