Row, row, row your boats. Gently down the stream…

Row, row, row your boats. Gently down the stream…Merrily, merrily. Row, row, row, row your boats.

A flood watch has been issued by the National Weather Service for flooding rains that may causing flooding potential across the area, this watch is in effect tomorrow evening into Sunday evening. Total rainfall of 1-3″+ (4-5″ of rain in ISOLATED spots) can be expected from this upcoming SLOW moving storm system. Get the arks out. Heaviest rain looks to occur Friday night into Saturday evening. Chance of rain 90% starting late Thursday night into Sunday morning. The heavy rain will taper off to rain showers on Sunday, with some luck we should see the sun return on Tuesday. Have a nice rowing contest this weekend. Watch out for flooded roadways, turn around don’t drown!

High pressure which has dominated our magnificent weather for the past 5 days has slid offshore and is allowing a return flow and thus temperatures soaring near 65 in most places. As this area of high pressure and several other areas attempts to BLOCK the storm system that is already cut-off from the main flow of the jet stream, the storm system will move EVEN SLOWER. A cut-off storm system is a storm system that has been detached from the main flow of the jet stream and thus saunters very slowly across the country as there is nothing to push it along and MOVE it. Cut-off storms do NOT like to MOVE it. This storm system will approach us from the mid-west starting tomorrow afternoon and evening, but is still not close enough to us to batter us with torrential downpours. As a new area of low pressure develops off the coast and moves inland over our area, the really intense rains will start to lash us with high wind gusts of 30 mph or greater possible. Why all this rain? This is thanks in part to the waning El Nino that is in place allowing a very active subtropical jet stream to fetch moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and stockpiling these storm systems with copious amounts of moisture. The winds from this storm system will be due to a tight pressure gradient between the high pressure in Canada and this storm in the Mid-Atlantic states. Without further ado, please check out the rainfall forecast map for this long duration event.