More Heavy Rains Possible This Weekend

With the work week already nearly halfway over, residents in Franklin, Hart, and the surrounding counties are continuing to dry out from the heavy downpours that occurred Labor Day Weekend.  The rains forced many in the area to either cancel plans or take them indoors.  The National Weather Service reports much of the area received two to four inches of rain during a span running from Friday through Monday morning.  Some pockets got as much as 6 inches of precipitation during that three-day period.  Clay Chaney is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Greenville-Spartanburg Office.  Chaney says a large amount of tropical moisture combined with other factors accounts for the heavy rainfall.

“We’ve had a surge of tropical moisture.  We’ve kind of gotten this southeasterly to southerly flow regime where it produced a lot of upslope showers and thunderstorms.  And then we were also just in an environment conducive to training storms.  So there were just areas that were getting hit with continuous upslope development along the escarpment and in the southern mountains.  And then you also had (like I said) that surge of tropical moisture.  And then on top of that whenever you have cells that are kind of training and just kind of going over one area over a period of time, constantly, the water just adds up pretty fast.”  

Chaney says we’ll have somewhat of a drying out period during the next few days with some afternoon showers and thunderstorms.  But this coming weekend could look like the past as another surge of tropical moisture is expected to be over Northeast Georgia and Upstate South Carolina.  Depending on how much shower and thunderstorm activity we see this week, there could be the potential for flooding this weekend.  The less shower and thundershower activity this week would allow more time for things to dry out.  The more shower and thunderstorm activity we get this week, the greater the potential for more precipitation to be added to already soaked grounds and standing water.  WLHR will keep you informed on the situation as it unfolds.