Flash Flood Watch for North Alabama

The NWS in Huntsville has issued a flash flood watch that is in effect until Thursday evening across North Alabama.

A slow-moving cold front with deep moisture ahead of it will bring the best widespread rain chances and rainfall amounts we have seen in awhile across North and Central Alabama. This is particularly good news given how abnormally dry it has become across the northern half of the state.

At Birmingham, the 0.73″ on Monday made a dent in our 30 and 90 day deficits, but we are still down 5.9 inches over the past 90 days.

There has been some relief in spots over the past seven days, with the best amounts have been over Northeast Alabama, southern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. Here is rainfall over the past 24 hours:

Here are precipitation totals over the past seven days, not including last night.

A nice trough is moving through the Midwest this morning, but a strong subtropical high-pressure system across the Gulf of Mexico into the western Atlantic is stubbornly holding its ground, keeping the front from making it through the Southeast. It will continue trying through Thursday evening before washing out. This will give us good rain chances until then.

Most areas across North and Central Alabama should see between 1.5 and 3 inches of rain. The highest amounts appear to be in the I-59 Corridor through early Friday morning.

Here are rainfall amounts off the GFS through Saturday morning:

The bullseye over Northeast Alabama is partially from rainfall the model predicted between midnight last night and this morning.

The rain won’t fall exactly like this. There will be winners and losers in the rainfall department. And there could be some folks who get too much and have flooding if storms train over the same areas.

The ground has been dry and can absorb a good bit of rainfall. But if amounts become excessive, some flooding could occur. So, we will take the rain, you can keep the flooding.

Category: Alabama's Weather, ALL POSTS