Let’s start local… Quiet weather continues here as a chilly morning turns to another great afternoon with a mix of sun and cumulus clouds. Afternoon temps run near 70 along the coast to the mid to upper 70s inland. Tomorrow is similar.
A couple features to watch mid to late week include a storm on the Carolina Coast, that likely gets designated the name Irma, and a cool front that moves through Thursday. First off, with high pressure wedged into New England, it’ll be very difficult for any tropical system to ride into New England. The most likely track of a would-be Irma is along the Carolina to Virginia Coast, and then kicked east to northeast. That keep most of the rain/wind south of us and out to sea. The northern fringes of this system may provide some showers Tuesday night/early Wednesday along the south coast of New England with winds gusting to 25-35mph at the south coast, but overall impacts seem rather minimal. We’ll keep an eye on it though. The front that comes through Thursday afternoon/night provides some scattered showers and isolated storms. On the other side of that front, it’s cool and breezy Friday with highs 65-70!
Harvey is the national story though. 24 hours rains in and around the Houston area is approaching 25″ in some spots with more to come. With so much so fast, flash flooding became devastating last night and this morning, and in some cases, life threatening. Roads, even highways are cutoff, and the water rescue effort has been ongoing.
With Harvey’s path so slow to move, the Texas ( and CONUS) rain record of 48″ may fall, depending on additional rain in the state. While it’s not uncommon for tropical cyclones to produce a tremendous amounts of moisture, the biggest issue I see with this system is it’s movement, or lack there of. With a nearly stationary spinning area of low pressure and continued access to Gulf of Mexico moisture, it’s a recipe for disastrous rainfall totals. Below is some other storms that have produced a tremendous amounts of rain.
See our record of 19.75″ in 1955? We can get flooding rains in here too from Tropical Storms and Hurricanes. Additionally, in 1954 we had Carol and Edna within 2 weeks strike New England.
Have a good Sunday.
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