Even though some local places have seen almost five inches of rain, no one seems to be complaining about the week’s worth of wet weather in Cullman during the past week — even if it has put a momentary damper on doing things outdoors.

“I managed to mow my yard Saturday morning — and then it rained again,” joked local Emergency Management Agency director Tim Sartin on Monday, noting that these late-July days of incessant rainfall have been a boon for the local soil.

“We didn’t have any significant flooding or damage or anything that was reported to us,” he said. “We were so dry before that it actually probably helped some. All in all, it didn’t really bother us, and was mostly welcome.”

Depending on where you were in Cullman County, your rainfall gauge might’ve collected only a couple of inches of precipitation since the rainy pattern began on July 24, or, perhaps, as much twice that amount. Though all of Cullman County has seen significant rainfall during the past week, cumulative totals have ranged from between 2 inches to more than 5 inches in various parts of the county.

The thorough soaking should at least move the needle on the county’s previous position as an area at risk of suffering from an incipient drought. As of July 23, nearly all of Cullman County charted with the “D1 — Moderate” segment of the U.S. Drought Monitor’s five-step drought schedule (“D4 — Exceptional Drought” is the worst.) The drought-charting agency hasn’t yet released a new chart that incorporates data from last week’s local rainfall totals.

For now, at least, the wettest of the recent rainy pattern seems to be coming to a slow end, giving way this week to a more typical summertime weather setup of hot, humid days peppered with smaller sporadic thunderstorms. As August approaches, “my guess is it’ll be typical weather: Hot in August and into September,” said Sartin, “before slowly cooling down.”