Heavy rain, river flooding

Another heavy rain event is in progress tonight over Alabama, and may continue into much of the day tomorrow.  Given the widespread 2-3″ rainfall amounts this weekend, the ground is fairly saturated and we will have to watch for possible flooding.  It has already rained 1/4″ to 1/2″ today and tonight over most of central Alabama, and with even heavier rain on the way overnight and tomorrow, many locations will wind up with 3-5″ of rain with this event, bringing the 1-week totals to 4-8″. 

Area rivers have not yet finished draining the water from the weekend’s heavy rain, and now more rain is coming.  Here are graphs from the Mulberry Fork of the Warrior River  and the Cahaba River

The Mulberry Fork flowing into the Warrior River is still about 2 feet higher than a week ago (and will rise more tomorrow), and the river flow along the Cahaba River at Cahaba Heights is almost 1,000 cubic feet per second.  With all the rain coming in, some places along these and other rivers may experience flooding.

Looking at just how much water is flowing across Alabama, a good measure I use is the total streamflow past Coffeeville on the Tombigbee River plus that past Claiborne Dam on the Alabama River.  All the water in the Cahaba, Coosa, Warrior, Tombigbee, Tallapoosa, and Alabama River Systems eventually makes it to these two points before it goes into Mobile Bay.  Right now, there are 160,000 cubic feet (over 1 million gallons) of water draining into Mobile Bay through these two points every second, or about 3.5 billion gallons per hour.

See below for Flood Warnings in effect already.

Category: Alabama's Weather