We still have a few nice days to enjoy this week before our forecast takes an increasingly wet shift as we progress through the weekend. As a side note, we still expect scattered showers and thunderstorms late Wednesday night into Thursday morning, but this shouldn’t be a significant event, locally.
What will become an increasing concern is the threat of periods of heavy rain and thunderstorms this weekend. The overall setup is a classic one for widespread heavy rain.
An area of high pressure will be located off the Mid Atlantic coast while surface low pressure develops in the southern Plains and tracks north over the weekend. The combination of these two ingredients will help pull abundant Gulf of Mexico moisture northward into the Ohio Valley. With a true Gulf connection, moisture-rich air will overspread the region this weekend. In addition to feeling truly muggy for the first time this year, this will also aid in periods of heavy rain this weekend.
Precipitable water values will approach 2″ at times this weekend and that’s plenty enough to create a localized flash flood concern.
From this distance, it appears like widespread 2″ to 3″ of rain will fall over the weekend, but localized heavier totals are expected where thunderstorms “train” over the same areas. While it won’t rain the entire weekend, times of wet weather will outnumber dry hours and if you live near a creek or stream, keep abreast of this developing weather situation as significant water rise is expected over the weekend.