It wasn't much, barely a third of an inch.

But like a baseball player who hits a weak infield ground ball to set a career batting record, the rain that fell late Tuesday and early Wednesday morning was more than enough to make 2011 the wettest year in Toledo's recorded history.

The record of 47.84 inches, set in 1950, was broken sometime between 4 and 5 a.m., according to National Weather Service readings at Toledo Express Airport, the city's official reporting station. Additional rain later in the day brought the year-to-date total to 48.15 inches as of 5 p.m.

With 2.41 inches of precipitation for the month, December also is well on its way to becoming the 11th of the year's 12 months to be wetter than average. Toledo's December norm is 2.68 inches, and more showery rain remained in the forecast through Thursday.

"It's not just one freakish month," Sarah Jamison, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service office in Cleveland, said of Toledo's precipitation record. "This was a persistent pattern."

The rain has confounded farmers, delayed highway construction projects, and reduced attendance at outdoor attractions such as the Toledo Zoo -- although Andi Norman, a zoo spokesman, said the weekday timing of heavy rain in late November meant a minimal impact on the ongoing Lights Before Christmas display.

Blame it all, Ms. Jamison said, on currents in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which are in a "La Nina" -- colder than normal -- phase that produces above-average precipitation in several areas of North America, including the Great Lakes region.

"We started getting into this La Nina late last year," Ms. Jamison said. "There have been a lot of storms crossing the Great Plains and then tapping Gulf [of Mexico] moisture."

The La Nina pattern, Ms. Jamison said, was fairly well forecast by the U.S. Climate Prediction Center and is expected to continue for several more months.

That means abnormal precipitation should persist in the Toledo area through winter, she said.

While late-autumn snowfall was unusually low in Toledo, "at some point we're going to get cold enough for it [precipitation] to be snow instead of rain," Ms. Jamison said. "At some point, it's going to shift."

Several other Ohio cities had broken precipitation records before Toledo did.

With 71.65 inches as of 10 a.m. Wednesday, Cincinnati has shattered its old record of 57.58 inches, and Cleveland has passed its previous, 53.83-inch record by more than 10 inches, with 64.25 inches by the afternoon.

Youngstown and Columbus also have had record rain in 2011, and Mansfield, Dayton, and Akron-Canton all have had their second-wettest years.

In Michigan, Detroit is at 46.97 inches, less than an inch shy of breaking its 47.69-inch precipitation record from 1880.

June has been the only month of 2011 so far this year to be drier than normal in Toledo, and it was significantly so: just 0.51 inch of rain compared with a 3.8-inch norm. June typically is the wettest month of the year in the Toledo area.

That was followed by a July that was the second-hottest on record, including a 102-degree high on the 21st that was the city's first hundred-degree reading since 1995.

Coming on the heels of a wet spring -- April was the second-wettest on record, May tied for ninth -- the dry, hot weather in June and July created difficult conditions for agriculture, said Timothy Fisher, chairman of the environmental sciences department at the University of Toledo.

It was tough to get a good yield "if you didn't get your crops in on time," Mr. Fisher said.

Heavier rain returned in September, just in time for the soybean harvest, and except for a brief respite in early October, continued all the way through fall, culminating with the 7.15 inches last month that made for the wettest November on record in Toledo.

More than 3 inches of that rain fell in one storm late in the month, causing many northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan rivers to flood.

Most notable was flooding along the River Raisin, where high water forced officials to close the M-50 bridge in Dundee and the U.S. 223 bridge in Blissfield.

Flooding forced several rescues in Sylvania Township and closed many rural roads throughout the region.

Because that storm occurred midweek, Ms. Norman said, it didn't hurt Lights Before Christmas attendance much. But the spring rain cut the zoo's first-half attendance by 20 percent, and then the hot July took another bite out of ticket sales.

For the Ohio Department of Transportation, the April rain at least contributed to, if not caused, the partial collapse of an embankment along I-475 in West Toledo where the freeway is being widened. The unfinished retaining wall in that area is just one of several rain-delayed elements in the $64 million project that is now months behind schedule.

Rain also held up completion of the Wheeling Street bridge reconstruction in Oregon, and this week ODOT announced that the U.S. 24 freeway between Waterville and Napoleon will open in September, instead of July, because of rain delays.

The rain also affected the department's routine maintenance, with mowing and ditch and drain maintenance suffering in particular, said Layth Istefan, the highway management administrator at ODOT's Bowling Green district office.

"We were still able to do crack sealing," he said, but scheduling work for the department's in-house "Paving Train" crew was complicated: "Basically, we were chasing good weather."

Saturated ground from the most recent rain is likely to cause more problems during the winter, Mr. Istefan said. While the season is getting off to a warm start, he said, all that water will cause heavier than normal frost heaves once the ground freezes and more potholes when it thaws again.

High water tables also increase the risk of flooding throughout the winter, Mr. Fisher said. Without their leaves, trees won't tap much moisture from the ground and then transpire it into the air, so soils will remain wet, he said.

"The rivers will be back up again -- they are going to flood again," he said.

"The water tables are high," Ms. Jamison agreed, calling future flooding prospects "a bit unsettling."

The winter season officially starts at 12:30 a.m. Toledo time on Thursday.

As of Wednesday afternoon, however, prospects for a white Christmas in Toledo were dim. Rain showers were possible through Thursday evening followed by snow showers early Friday, but after that, the National Weather Service predicted dry skies in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan, and enough warmth Friday and Saturday to melt any snow that might accumulate before then.

Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.

First Published December 22, 2011, 6:03 a.m.