A green Christmas: holiday weekend storm spreading drenching downpours from Plains to South
Several inches of rain—not snow—will soak areas from the nation's heartland to the Southeast in the run up to the Christmas holiday, leading to a threat for flooding but also bringing drought relief.
Two systems coming together over the central United States will create widespread disruptions through Christmas from the Gulf Coast to the Rocky Mountains.
Santa will have to trade his snow gear for rain boots as a moisture-packed storm moves across the nation's midsection and South over the long Christmas weekend, bringing a threat of flooding downpours.
The storm, fresh on the heels of soaking Southern California and the Southwest deserts, will spread rain across most of the Plains and lower Mississippi Valley through Christmas Eve, while also delivering some snow to the Intermountain West and Rockies. By Christmas Day, the rain will expand across the Midwest and Southeast.
"After a relatively dry stretch of weather across much of the Plains and Southeast during the lead-up to the Christmas holiday, a change in the weather pattern is resulting in a soggy holiday for many," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said.
Not only will the rain lead to a green Christmas, rather than a white Christmas, for this vast stretch of the country, but downpours can cause slow holiday travel, localized flooding and even a few strong thunderstorms.
As the storm combines forces with moisture coming from the Gulf of Mexico, rain will slowly spread eastward across the South through Sunday night.
“There has not been much rain over such a broad area of the Central states in many months,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said. “While the rain is needed and may help boost Mississippi River levels a bit in the weeks ahead, it may make for a muddy holiday along some country roads in rural areas of the Heartland.”
The repeated downpours can unload 1-3 inches in rain gauges, often in just a few hours, which can lead to flooding in cities such as Dallas, Houston, Little Rock and Memphis, as well as portions of interstates 10, 20, 30, 35, 40, 49 and 55. Some locally higher amounts near 4 inches are not out of the question.
While the Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley will begin to dry out by Christmas, millions more to the north and east from the Lower Midwest through the Southeast will see the rain arrive for the holiday, including around Atlanta, Chicago, Jacksonville, Nashville and St. Louis. The threat of widespread flooding is low as the storm picks up speed, but it won't be a pretty picture for those who were hoping to spend time outside on Christmas.
"On Christmas Day, the storm will tap into copious amounts of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico," said Pydynowski, "This will bring a general inch or two of rain to cities such as Asheville and Greenville [South Carolina] into Monday night."
The wet weather will not end there, as the storm advances up the East Coast after Christmas.
"The storm can also produce difficult post-holiday road travel on Tuesday, Dec. 26, as rain spreads northward along the I-85 corridor, slowing travel from Charlotte to Raleigh and even into Virginia near Richmond," added Pydynowski.
Although many have dreams of a beautiful backdrop of snow outside on Christmas morning, the prospect of rain is not all bad. According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor released Thursday, Dec. 21, a large swath of the area expected to receive heavy rain, from Texas to the Tennessee Valley, was in drought conditions, up to and including the most dire category, "exceptional" drought.
Since the beginning of the year, New Orleans is nearly 25 inches below the historical average for rainfall, while Jackson, Mississippi, is about 15 inches below average. Since the beginning of June, many areas have received only 40 to 65 percent of the rain that is typically recorded over that stretch.
While the expected rain will not close those deficits entirely, any amount will provide some relief amid one of the worst droughts on record for the area, which is severely impacting regional economies.
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