The latest Drought Monitor update issued this morning by the NWS Climate Prediction Center shows that some portions of our area still remain in “Abnormally Dry” or in drought classifications, but that there have been no major changes. In fact, if anything, areas of western Colbert and Franklin Counties in Alabama back into southern Tishomingo County, Mississippi have actually improved one category.
While we haven’t had a ton of rainfall lately, the decent little soaking we got from the line of storms back last Saturday night has helped, in addition to those over-performing quick-hitting thundershowers in the morning and midday a couple of days ago. That has given our entire area a good half to inch and a half or rain over the last seven days. When looking at the percentage of rain compared to normal for the past 30 days, it’s easy to see that northwest Alabama into Wayne and Hardin Counties of Tennessee are a little behind, but not extremely so. When combining this with the percent of rainfall for the past 365 days being very near normal for everyone (mainly because of a wet first 6-7 months of the year), it helps explain why drought conditions aren’t severely taking over the area lately despite not a ton of rain lately.
Looking ahead in the forecast, we do stand to see some more rain over the next 7 days… especially on Sunday into Sunday night, with off and on showers lingering through the first half of next week. The NWS “official” forecast has the entire are at or just over an inch of rain for the next 7 days. I’ve decided to include both the Euro and GFS computer models for the same time period. The Euro shows much closer to 2″ or a little more for everyone due to more in the way of widespread heavy rain on Sunday. It has been very consistent in this idea for days now, and other models have trended toward its large scale setup, even while having smaller-scale details different because of the way they model the behavior of rain and storm complexes. For example, the GFS model has lower totals, closer to a widespread 1.0 to 1.5 inch rainfall, even though it has a similar setup. This is because it has a larger thunderstorm complex to our south along the Gulf Coast that tries to cut off some of the deeper moisture to our area for widespread heavy rainfall. That IS a possibility, but the GFS hasn’t been performing well with systems lately until within 24-36 hours of an event, and it’s consistently verified too dry with systems going all the way back to February. It’s also flipped flopped on a setup a good bit this week and has had to start trending toward the Euro with its large scale setup. The Euro hasn’t been perfect, but it’s had a much better track record, especially lately. For now, that’s the general direction we’re heading with our forecast, but an areawide 1 to 2 inch rainfall is a good middle ground expectation for our area for the next seven days!
