NorthHillsWx

Getting slammed by storms

Just had a cell blow up overhead and drop 0.21”

Today’s rain brought me to 6.73” for the month but we’ve caught rogue storms a few times last 5 days. The widespread heavy rains have definitely been replaced with typical hit or miss storms during that period in central NC

Just had a nasty lightning storm. 0.18” in short order

Got clipped by a storm and picked up 0.06” in about 45 seconds lol

Between the afternoon storms seemingly setting up in same spots every day and the extreme rains from the tropical system I’d have to think some sites between the triangle and triad have to be approaching all time records for total July rainfall

Had a nice outflow cooled evening in the 70’s followed by a period of steady but light rain that didn’t amount to much but brought the daily total to 0.20” and MTD to 6.49”

Serious flooding NE of Greensboro right now I’d imagine

0.15” here this morning brings mtd to 6.44”

We finished with 1.06” which brings our July total to a staggering 6.29” with half a month left

We’re getting a very heavy afternoon storm with a couple scary-close lightning strikes. Will probably end up close to an inch of rain but it’s still pouring

We were in that boat last month when everyone else was being flooded. Thankfully the tables turned here and we’re at 5.23” for july with half a month to go

Picked up 0.12” yesterday from a shower that popped up overhead from that massive outflow that expanded from storms that originated in Franklin county. Not sure anyone watched yesterday’s radar loop in central nc but that was an insane explosion of an outflow boundary with textbook cells popping as it propagated in all directions. Looked like a bomb on radar

We’re at 5.11” with what looks like another wet week upcoming

We got smoked again. 1.45” with a ton of close lightning strikes and some pretty solid wind gusts. Today’s rainfall brings our two day total to exactly 4.00”

Here’s comes today’s round… looks to be organizing quickly but faster moving

Yesterday was one of the more impressive non-tropical summertime rainfalls we’ve had in a long time from a coverage perspective. Pretty much every location from the triad through the Triangle picked up at least 1.5” of rain and many areas had 2-3” obviously with some totals much higher than that

Have been unable to sleep due to intense lightning and thunder overhead. Sitting at 2.52” and still raining a little. Shockingly it looks like another band may be building up to our west that could move through later Finished with 2.55”

We’ve picked up more rain in the last hour and a half than we received through the entire month of June

Storm gusted out before it got here but we’re getting the goods in the rainfall department finally

I have to correct my total from Chantal. That was my weekly total including last weeks rain. We received just 0.52” from Chantal here. I was at the beach during the storm and didn’t know I was looking at weekly. Our monthly total is 1.11”

To my post above, one thing I believe may have happened here was the circulation was much more mature and deeper than forecasters had expected. A storm that had been forecast to degenerate into a trough in the Carolina’s largely kept its surface circulation intact into the mid Atlantic. This led to a much stronger southerly and easterly flow which enhanced moisture transport and efficiency longer than expected so the “core” was able to sustain itself longer than expected. I think when you see weak storms hit land a lot of times they kind of vanish inland and just their moisture is left but when they become more vertically stacked and mature it takes them longer to wind down and you can see a core of heavy rain sustain itself longer. That’s my 0.02 as to why Chantal was so much worse than forecast this weekend

This was a huge forecasting miss in the rainfall department. The watches hoisted explicitly stated 1-3” with isolated totals to 5”. We ended up seeing widespread 4-7” totals with isolated amounts to nearly 1 foot! At least the areas were correctly identified from a watch standpoint but there is a huge difference between a watch for 1-3” of rain and isolated flash flooding and what happened including historic river flooding. This needs to be reexamined as to why forecasts were so grossly off for rainfall totals. Tropical systems are generally “easy” to forecast in this department as the are organized and have many runs of computer models analyzing ongoing convection so you don’t usually misses of this caliber with an organized tropical system

We finished with 1.11” from Chantal

Obviously hurricanes Florence and Michael had catastrophic flood events for parts of central NC but that was mostly east of the areas impacted by Chantal. I think these areas you’d have to go back to 1996 Hurricane Fran to find anything close to this. You keep seeing the record crests from that storm mentioned in NWS flood forecasts as it was the benchmark for these areas in terms of river flooding which makes this all the more impressive