United States Map 1916 Annual Precipitation Print - Pacific Northwest, Gulf South, Great Plains

Joseph Burton Kincer and Francis J. Marschner compiled this Average Annual Precipitation map for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Atlas of American Agriculture, printed in Washington as part of a federal reference on the country's land, climate, soils, and vegetation prepared under O.E. Baker of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Drawn in 1916 and finished in full color, the sheet uses a graded scale from light yellow to dark green to mark average annual rainfall in inches across the country, with contour lines demarcating each precipitation zone and a smaller inset showing what percentage of that annual total typically fell during the April-to-September growing season. The atlas as a whole was compiled across the 1910s and 1920s, part of a systematic federal effort to give farmers reliable climate data rather than anecdote.

The Pacific Northwest and the Gulf South both carry the darkest green shading, regions receiving well over sixty inches of rain in an average year from very different weather systems. A wide band running through the Great Plains and intermountain West carries the lightest shading on the map, some areas recording under ten inches annually and depending on irrigation for any reliable cultivation. The Midwest and East fall in a comfortable middle range, rainfall generally adequate for the corn, wheat, and mixed farming that dominated those regions. The growing-season inset adds a further layer, showing that a region's annual total mattered less to farmers than whether that rain actually fell during the months crops needed it.

Rainfall and drought history are this sheet's specific subject, making it a fitting gift for anyone whose own region's fortunes have historically turned on how much rain it received in a given year, and a natural fit for a collector of American agricultural climate maps. The store also carries six companion sheets from the same Atlas of American Agriculture, covering great soil groups, parent materials of soils, natural vegetation, physical features, summer temperatures, and last spring frost dates; this sheet is the only one in that set focused specifically on rainfall. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.