December 1

43 degrees, steady rain, gusty winds, gotta love Mississippi winters.

Well Tropical Storm Ida did not bring rain to central MS, it stayed to our southeast. Hattiesburg got 1.31 inches of rain.

We have been having very nice weather and it is expected to continue. Though we may have a short cloudy rainy Monday afternoon and night. A weak system looks to bring a brief area of rain but not much to talk about.

Now in the Extended forecast there could be a bigger storm system next week. Being a week away this could change very much. But I will keep an eye on it and see if we get any "interesting"(bad) weather.

Hurricane?

Wet October is over and so far November has been great. However today the sky has been filling in clouds and rain is on the way. We ended the month with 9.71 inches of rain at my house(October averages around 3.5 inches).

Now onto the big story. Hurricane Ida is in the Gulf and headed north. Now the forecast track takes it up to some where near the MS/AL border then it takes a sharp right turn away from us. This makes for a tough forecast for us in Central MS. There looks to be a trough in the upper levels approaching from the west. This could combine with Ida and make for a very wet forecast. Problem is where. I do believe we will see heavy rains in central MS with the worst to our east. However slight changes in the location of either Ida or the trough could make a large difference in who sees the most rain.

More

The last system i blogged about turned out to be a bit of a dud (for where I live), only got 0.4 inches. There is another system threatening Thursday through Saturday. The surface low will be far to our north, but this time there will be better upper-level support. The NAM and GFS models are showing a large 500mb trough extend through the great planes. This will aid in uplift for these storms.

Areas of Arkansas and Louisiana could see over 6 inches of rain (the last thing they need right now). Here in Mississippi it looks closer to 1 to 2 inches. However, one good downpour could bring the actual total above that, or (as was the case last week) it could weaken as it comes our way.

OK, maby alot more rain on the way.

Well the NWS in Jackson issued a flash flood watch for central Mississippi. In their discussion they mentioned up to 3 inches of rain is possible. The remnants (leftovers) of hurricane Rick (from the Pacific) look like they are going to be drawn in the system. The system itself is not moving that fast witch will give it plenty of time to wash us out. However it is not that strong either and there is limited instability which may limit severe storms. This rain is the last thing we need, especially the farmers.

A little more rain on the way

So far I have had 7.34 inches of rain at my place (The average is about 3.4 inches for the entire month). The record is 10.58 inches set in 1918, so are we set to break this? I don't think so, however, if we get a slow moving thunderstorm move over that record be endangered.

There will be some rain in the next couple of days (Thursday and Friday), but it dose not look to be that much. There will be a not so organized system moving south west to north east of our area.

I will try to have an update tomorrow.

Rain, Rain ,Rain

September ended up as an unusually rainy month here in the Jackson area. The average monthly rainfall is 3.23 inches (at the airport). I had 6.11 inches at my house. That is nothing compared to some places north east of here. A Cocorahs stations in Oktibbeha county had over 14 inches (Thankfully that was a monthly total, not a daily total). October is starting off rainy, just 4 days in and I have 1.69 inches, plus what has been falling today. We are well on the way to exceeding the average of 3.42 inches.

Early Friday Morning

Word of warning. I am quite tired as I write this so it may not make sense, especially to someone who knows a lot about meteorology. Above are two outputs from the NAM/WRF model for 12z Friday (7:00am). Sorry I was lazy and did not mention the other models. The top one shows 700 mb height, omega (lift), and moisture. I went ahead and highlighted what is going on over Mississippi. If this model verifies it looks like we will have a line of thunderstorms pass through central Mississippi early Friday morning.
The bottom one shows sea level pressure, 1000-to-500 mb thickness and 6 hour rainfall. (Please note, the 6 hour rainfall is what has already fallen not what is falling). With the low pressure centered well to our north and other factors I am too tired to think of right now, these storms will probably not be severe, although one or two strong storms can not be ruled out.

Next Rain Chances

As we begin to dry out from the unusual heavy recent rains (>6 inches at my house for the month) we now look towards the end of this week for the next rain chances. Currently it looks to be in the Friday morning time frame. Several models (GFS/ UKMet/ European/ canadian (too early for the WRF)) place low pressure centerd ofer eastern South Dakota or extreme northeast Nebraska. This will send a cool front through our area. It looks right now that severe storms (if any) will stay to out north. More to come latter (including some of the upper air forecasts).

The Anticyclone

Anticyclone is basically a fancy term for high pressure. I just like the term because it sounds like some super menacing storm but brings fair weather. More stuff to come later.