In the summer, Whidbey Island growers couldn’t wait for rains to come to replenish their fields.

This winter, most farmers can’t wait for them to stop.

An unusually wet December has saturated soils on the island and left portions of many fields underwater.

In most cases, this wouldn’t be a problem during the chilly winter when perennial crops go dormant or many fields are bare.

However, too much rain, and particularly too much standing water, can be detrimental for crops.

That’s something that lavender grower Sarah Richards is coping with this winter.

A portion of her lavender field near West Beach Road outside Coupeville is flooded, something she hasn’t experienced since she began growing plants there for her Lavender Wind Farm business in 2000.

She expects to lose about 300 to 400 plants that have been sitting in water after more than 5 inches of rain fell during the month of December.

They were planted about five years ago and should have lasted another five years, she said.

“The lavender plants that are in the pond will die,” Richards said. “They can’t take standing water.”

The lost plants cover only a small portion of the roughly 4-acre field that was impacted along Darst Road. Richards said maybe one-third of an acre was affected. She has other fields that didn’t flood and didn’t notice the problem surfacing in this particular one until late in the month.

“It was like a Christmas present,” she said.

Lavender is very sensitive to a root rot disease, Richards said, so she will have to look for signs of that to determine whether she’ll need to delay more planting in that area.

“If that happens we won’t be able to plant lavender there for a very long time,” she said. “We will have to wait and see.”

Retired farmer Roger Sherman said he can’t recall a wetter month in all of his years running a dairy business  on Ebey’s Prairie.

David Broberg, innkeeper at the Blue Goose Inn in downtown Coupeville, reported 5.5 inches of rain in December from his weather station atop his inn’s roof. That one month accounted for roughly one-fourth of the 23.665 inches of rain that fell during all of 2015.

Naval Air Station Whidbey Island reported 5.12 inches of rain in December, more than double the rainfall from the same month in 2014 (2.07 inches).

Langley’s AgWeatherNet weather station from Washington State University recorded 7.52 inches of rain in December.

SeaTac International Airport reported one of its wettest Decembers on record with more than 11 inches of precipitation. Seattle had more than 44 inches of rain in 2015, about seven inches more than its average.

This is all in stark contrast to one of the region’s extreme dry spell that started in May and lasted through September.

Coupeville got less than an inch of rain during the months of May, June and July.

Broberg said November also was very wet, helping make up for the extremely dry spring and summer.

The heavy rains that started in November kept Island County Public Works busy unplugging storm drains, postponed the paving of Madrona Way in Coupeville until spring and created flooding problems in Oak Harbor.

Excessive water from one November storm contributed to nearly causing a tank to overflow at Oak Harbor’s sewage treatment plant after a pump failed.

“It was just a year of extremes,” said Don Sherman of Coupeville’s Sherman Farms. “We had no water, then we flipped the page and now are having so much water, we don’t know what to do with it.”

Sherman is keeping an eye on his cabbage crops that he grows through the winter for cabbage seed. Some of his fields also flooded. The waters receded and he will be assessing the impact of both the rain and frost.

“In winter, you’re always keeping your fingers crossed hoping you can make it to spring with the crop,” he said.