Heavy Rain, April 29/30, 2012 [REVIEW]

 Severe Weather, Weather  No Responses »
Apr 302012
 

Radar Rain Estimate

A combination of two different rounds of rain the the second being the heaviest produced flash flooding in a portion of the Ozarks.

Hardest hit areas were portions of Vernon County from Nevada westward over into Kansas. Radar estimates around 6-7″ of rain fell in this area.

Sections of Highway’s 54 and 71 were impassable at some point late last night. On highway 54, Wolf Creek overflowed and shut down both lanes of traffic.  Water on Highway 71 north of Nevada was also closed to north and south-bound traffic for a time.

A section of Panama road southwest of Nevada was washed out.  El Dorado Springs also experienced extensive street flooding.

I’m forecasting more rounds of heavy rain to visit the Ozarks, most likely in these same areas.

A Flash Flood Watch remains in effect of the counties shown through Tuesday morning.

Note: this afternoon, the Springfield National Weather Service found damage consistent with that of a tornado in Hickory County, 2 miles NNE of Humansville.  It touched down doing only EF 0 damage around 1:54 am. Details at this link.

Flash Flood Watch

Rain With More Rain Coming

 Weather  No Responses »
Mar 202012
 

Radar Rain Estimate Through 8:30 Monday

The forecast rains came and with a slow-moving system, more is on the way!

The radar rain estimator seems to line up pretty well with “ground truth” so far with the heaviest rain totals in extreme southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas and then west in Oklahoma and Kansas.

Joplin set a new daily rainfall record at 3.06″ for Monday the 19th.  Portions of Newton and McDonald Counties picked up about 4-5 inches.  The Oklahoma Mesonet reports that Jay has accumulated 5.41″ with Pryor coming in at 6.01″.

The pattern still features a slow-moving upper level low to our southwest, high and deep levels of humidity in the atmosphere and storms which will “train” or move over the same area again.  This will continue to encourage heavy and flooding rains.

Heavy Rain Set-Up

Enclosed is a sort of a super weather satellite image which has the ability to not only show clouds but also humidity in the middle and upper atmosphere.  Dark or red colors would indicate dry air (there really isn’t any!) Clouds show up as bright white.  The milky color in-between is high humidity levels.

Between now and Thursday, an additional 2-4″ of rain will fall in the Ozarks.  Perhaps as much as 4-5″ will fall over northcentral Arkansas.

Each new day will find the rain area shifting slowly east. So if you feel left out of the spring rain picture east of Springfield, give it a few days!

The latest rainfall forecast from the Hydrological Prediction Center (HPC) can be found here.

 

Severe Weather [UPDATE]

 Severe Weather  2 Responses »
Nov 212011
 

The cool and stable air in place at the surface will largely remain in place through the rest of the day in the Ozarks.  Any severe threat will be very limited and would most likley take the form of small hail and would be restricted to small sections of northcentral Arkansas.

The heavy rains are still on tap for later tonight and flash flood watches are still in effect for areas south of I-44.