Good Saturday morning to everyone,
As you have probably noticed over the past 48 hours, we have quickly emerged into a daily pattern of afternoon and evening thunderstorms that are slow movers but still very beneficial to the state as everyone is dealing with a drought.
Let’s breakdown the 500 mb pattern as we have a gap between the Bermuda high and the Southwest US upper high. There’s also some heights over western Canada that has further slowed the jet stream down across North America here in the last 10 days of July.
Looking at the image below, the weakness aloft centered over the Mississippi River provides a favorable pattern for scattered to widespread thunderstorms. There is no end to that over the next seven days.
Looking at the atmosphere at the lower levels, a dying front and deep moisture is oriented from southwest to northeast across the Gulf Coast States toward the Southern Appalachians and Mid-Atlantic. The overlap of deep moisture and a trigger at the surface is the perfect recipe for storm activity to fire up in the afternoons and linger into the nighttime hours.
The Bottom Line…
We are going to remain in a wet pattern over the next seven days as there are no features at the jet stream level to dislodge the upper low/trough to our west. Rainfall amounts according to global ensembles look quite healthy over the next five days. On top of what has already fallen, a consensus of 1-3 inches of rain will be widespread through the middle of next week.
With the convective nature of rain, a few locations could get significantly more in a short order, therefor small stream or urban flooding can’t be ruled out.
The expectation is for the upcoming rainy pattern will help slow down the current drought that has reached severe and extreme drought categories across parts of the state.
