I think its “tropical rainfall” for the week, which is essentially falling over a 48 hour period. Besides the 9 inches forecast Wed-Thursday at my house, they are also forecasting .04 inches tomorrow and .18 Friday.
Agree with your assessment that it will likely be more garden variety flooding than a major disaster caused when a tropical storm parks in place. GA had that in 1994 with Alberto, and some spots did see 2ft plus of rain
I was living about 4 hours south-southwest of Atlanta for Alberto. Three feet of rain.
Filling and moving sandbags to bolster the town’s levee was hard work.
Spring/early summer storms dump 5+ inches of rain in an area fairly regulary, but that area is usually limited to an area the size of a small county. 5-8 inches across an entire state is a lot of water.
Southeast GA could be in for a particularly rough time again given the watershed river flow
The pink part of the map with the extreme rainfall overlaps with the Appalachian temperate rain forest. They get a lot of rain when weather systems hit a little altitude. It’s not too populated, mountainous, heavily wooded, with lots of streams.
Helene is forecast to become a major hurricane before landfall, and may even be Cat 4. Either way, it’s huge so it’s going to dump a lot of water.
Some broadcast said it could be the most rain of any storm theyve had. Then the list was 4 storms starting with “I”.
Helene ahead of the pace!
In terms of size, strength, and heading for ATL this reminds me a lot of Opal in 1995. That was pretty bad here in terms of trees downed and power outages. It was also very bad in the NE GA mountains, where tree fall cut power and isolated homes for extended periods.
I was still four hours southwest of Atlanta when Opal happened.
I remember hearing about all the complaints from around the Atlanta area and thinking, “if you really want to see something…”
Heck, even the local Waffle House was closed!
For anyone who doesn’t know:
Got a flight scheduled to leave tomorrow night, just plans to see family over the weekend so no big deal if it’s canceled. Got groceries over my lunch break - no line at the checkout counter, big contrast to what life was like in NYC right before a big storm (usually blizzard).
I wouldn’t have wanted to fly out of ATL tonight even if my flight wasn’t canceled. Besides the weather itself, it will be a zoo there due to all the people stuck from canceled flights.
Meanwhile, I’m watching a group of storm chasers livestreaming from a hotel parking lot in Perry, Florida, as they experience the eyewall.
Thank-you Starlink for making such foolishness possible.
Is that a big eye?
Yep
Wound up being a rain event here, but not as bad as forecast in ATL. Center of storm stayed a little more east than expected through GA, which spared the metro from bad winds
Busick, NC: 29.58" of rain so far
is some of that improved recognition of speeds and ability to refine the rating?
