Rain Spreading North a Little Faster

It’s still pretty light, but as you can see from the radar image taken from the Birmingham Doppler radar just after 1 pm, some light rain and sprinkles have moved into Central Alabama from the south and southeast. Observing stations that have seen rain have recorded only a few hundredths of an inch at most. The Panama City area which has seen light rain for several hours already reported nearly 4 tenths of an inch.

The broader radar view in the image below shows a good deal of rain in the Big Bend area of Florida stretching over to west of the Panama City area. Rain had also spread into Southeast Louisiana and extreme southern Mississippi. It also appears likely that Mobile will be seeing some additional rain over the next couple of hours. Rain was also occurring from Lake Charles, LA, westward along the Southeast Texas coast to near Victoria, TX.

It still looks wet for much of the last several days of September. Rainfall during the next 72 hours should see amounts of one half to one and a half inches across the northern half of Alabama. The southern portion of Alabama including the coastal area as well as the Florida Panhandle could see 2 to 4 inches of rain. Since it has been fairly dry for the last several weeks, this rainfall should not result in any serious flash flooding or longer term river flooding. It’s also helpful that the area of disturbed weather which has moved off the northeast coast of the Yucatan Peninsula will progress northward at a fairly brisk pace. And speaking of that area of disturbed weather, I noticed that the NHC folks have lowered the chances of it developing into a full fledged organized tropical system.

The only bad news in all of this is that the chances of people in Central Alabama – or just about all of Alabama – having an opportunity to see the lunar eclipse seem to be getting dimmer. Rats!!

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather