Strengthening storm threatens severe weather, flooding rainfall in southern US
Flooding rainfall, large hail and a few tornadoes are all possible in the coming days across the south-central and Southeastern United States to end the week, snarling travel and outdoor plans.
Storm chaser Mike Scantlin captured these flashes of lightning at an airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the early morning of March 7. Slow-motion video shows lightning illuminating the dark, stormy sky.
There will be little reprieve from the stormy pattern across the South as the atmosphere will quickly reload with ingredients for another round of heavy rain and thunderstorms to end the week.
Through Saturday, residents from parts of the southern Plains into the Southeast will be on alert for the potential for heavy rain and thunderstorms as a storm system strengthens and marches eastward. The storm will threaten localized severe weather through Saturday evening as it draws warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico first and then the Atlantic Ocean later.
Clusters of showers and thunderstorms will drift eastward through Friday night, shifting the risk into the lower Mississippi River Valley and much of the South. Once again, the storms will pulse and wane with the greatest risk of severe weather from mid-afternoon on Friday to the first part of Friday night. Within this zone, a moisture-packed air mass flowing out of the Gulf of Mexico will also fuel the risk of flooding.
A wide swath of 2-4 inches of rain is expected between Friday and Saturday, spanning a zone from central Mississippi to west-central South Carolina. In areas where multiple thunderstorms track over the same locations, localized areas could far exceed 4 inches of rain, potentially tallying up near the AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 9 inches.
“With moisture content well above average, thunderstorms can produce rainfall rates of at least 1-2 inches per hour from Louisiana, southern Mississippi Friday to Alabama and Georgia,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Joe Bauer explained.
Some of the major cities that may experience significant urban flooding for a time include Jackson, Mississippi; Atlanta and Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama.
This risk can extend right through Saturday as the tail end of the storm slowly treks through the Southeast. Additional heavy rain and thunderstorms are expected to focus from the Florida Peninsula into the Carolinas, putting a damper on outdoor plans across the region.
There is the likelihood of locally severe thunderstorms from northern Florida, southeastern Alabama and Georgia on Saturday to parts of the Carolinas during late Saturday and Saturday evening. A concentrated zone of severe weather is most likely to be centered on southeastern Georgia to part of the South Carolina coast.
The storm is expected to largely shift off the Atlantic coast by Sunday, ushering in a much cooler and drier air mass in its wake. There can be a few trailing showers across central and South Florida, but the risk of severe thunderstorms or flooding rainfall appears to be very low at this time.
Looking ahead to early next week, a stretch of dry weather is in store for the South and Southeast, allowing many communities to dry out.
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