Above: Click on the graphic to enlarge. Rainfall forecast for the 5-day period ending at 8 am EDT Wednesday, October 12, 2011. The storm system affecting Florida this weekend is expected to bring up to 11 inches of rain along the coast. Heavy rains associated with a strong trough of low pressure are also expected to dump 4 - 6 inches of rain over drought-stricken areas of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. NOAA/HPC.
The Current Forecast
The large low pressure system that the computer models have forecast for days has started to evolve. We had our first significant rains around 3:00 am last night. Interesting to note that these were our first October rains in 3 years (the past two Octobers we experienced no rain).
The low pressure system with heavy rain is expected to continue to develop over Cuba, South Florida, and the Bahamas on Saturday. The counter-clockwise flow around this low will bring strong winds and heavy rains to much of the Florida coast on Saturday, and these conditions should spread northwards to Georgia by Sunday and South Carolina by Monday.
It is doubtful that this storm will acquire enough organization to evolve into a subtropical storm that gets a name, based on the latest computer model output, and the fact that the storm's center may well be over the state of Florida. This will be a large, diffuse system that will bring strong winds and heavy rains to a large area of the Southeast U.S. coast, regardless of the exact center location. Portions of the coastal waters along the Florida Panhandle, as well as from Northeast Florida to South Carolina, are likely to experience sustained winds of 30 - 40 mph Monday and Tuesday. Since the storm is going to get its start as a cold-cored, upper-level low pressure system with some dry air aloft, it will not be able to intensify quickly.
Above: The amount of rain needed to break the Texas drought is in excess of 15 inches (purple colors) over most of the state. This year's drought is officially Texas' worst one-year drought on record. While this map also shows that the amount of rain Central Florida needs to break the current drought is over 15 inches, I estimate we could take 48 inches and still remain relative dry as this doesn't factor in the extremely low (or dry) lake levels occurring in Central Florida: NOAA/NWS.
Heavy rain event coming for drought-stricken regions of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas
A strong low pressure system is expected to track across the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles this weekend, bringing the heaviest rains of the year to drought-stricken portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, including Abilene. Rainfall in this region has been 13 - 20 inches below normal for the year; Lubbock, Texas has had just 3 inches of rain this year, compared to a normal of 16 inches.
Rainfall amount of 1 - 4 inches will be common in the region over the weekend, and may be able to reduce drought conditions from the highest level (exceptional) to the second highest level (extreme). However, the heaviest rains will probably stay confined to the western half of Texas, and Texas's major cities such as Houston will see very little rain over the weekend. As of yesterday, Houston had gone 253 consecutive days without a one-inch rainstorm, a new record. The longest previous such streak was 192 days, set in 1917-1918. The last one inch rainstorm in the city was January 24, 2011. Remarkably, the local National Weather Service office has not issued any flood products in over a year.
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