The weather pattern that soaked parts of Texas and Louisiana earlier this week will shift to the east before stalling, setting up days of severe weather and a prolonged flash flood threat through early next week.
According to the FOX Forecast Center, a broad area across the South and mid-Atlantic will face an increasing threat of thunderstorms beginning Thursday afternoon when a cluster of storms will develop across Middle Tennessee and move east into northern Alabama, North Georgia, and western North Carolina, an area that is still recovering from Hurricane Helene.
Storms will track along a stalled cold front through the weekend with a widespread 3-5 inches of rain expected from Florida through the Carolinas, with some tallies reaching a foot and possibly more.
Severe storms threaten Helene-ravaged western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee with damaging hail
Thursday’s severe storms will develop in the afternoon and could produce very large hail, greater than 2 inches, and severe wind gusts in an area covering cities like Knoxville, Tennessee, and Asheville, North Carolina, where many communities are still recovering from Helene’s devastation last September.
There is also a tornado threat associated with these storms. NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center has issued a Level 2 out of 5 risk for severe thunderstorms for the region.
Flash flood threat for Southeast lasts through the weekend
The worst of this week’s flooding appears to have impacted parts of southern Louisiana, where some communities reported over 8 inches of rainfall in just 24 hours.
“You had training storms just dumping buckets of rain over the same spots, which is why we’re seeing a lot of clustering near Lake Charles, Louisiana, in between I-10 and I-49,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Haley Meier said while pointing out storm reports.
A rather unusual weather pattern for May, known as an Omega block, is largely responsible for the stagnant system, with prolonged periods of warmth in some areas of the country and steady rain in others.
The National Weather Service in New Orleans warns that the aftermath of the rain days later can be just as consequential, with many streams and rivers across the lower Mississippi Valley at moderate flood stage and likely facing weeks of high water levels.
How much more rain is expected?
Computer model forecasts show a widespread swath of 2-5 inches of rainfall over the next five days, with some communities possibly seeing totals upwards of a foot into next week.
Cities such as Tallahassee, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and Charleston, South Carolina, are all in the zone of potentially the heaviest precipitation, where rainfall totals could approach double-digits before the wet weather pattern winds down.
“A good 2 to 3 inches for a spot like Panama City, Florida, and, for Gulfport, Mississippi, 1 to 2 inches. But I do think if we have a couple storms that park overhead and can produce some pretty intense rain rates, which is what’s projected, these numbers may be under-doing it just a touch,” Meier said.
While the flash flood threat is elevated through the week and into the weekend, it is not currently near the top of the threat scale, thanks in part to many areas along the Eastern Seaboard being in drought conditions and in need of rainfall.
In addition to any storm potentially becoming strong to severe, with hail and damaging winds, it’s the rainfall and associated flooding that have forecasters most concerned.
Flash flooding is the deadliest weather-related hazard in the U.S., and, according to NOAA data, an average of 127 people die from it each year.
According to National Weather Service forecasters, just 6 inches of fast-moving water can knock an adult off their feet, and a foot of floodwater can carry a car away.
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