Heavy Rain From Helene Coming Thursday Night Through the Weekend

WBBJ 7 Forecast Update

September 25, 2024

Joel Barnes,

WBBJ 7 Forecast Update:

May be an image of map, tornado and text

The tail end of a front could bring a few sprinkles this evening but we should be mostly dry tonight. Heavy rain bands from Hurricane Helene will move in late Thursday and become relentless on Friday and lasting through the weekend. Very heavy rain with some localized amounts up to 6″ will be possible before the system breaks up and clears out on Monday in West Tennessee. If you have outdoor plans Friday or this weekend, you are going to get wet! Catch the full forecast and latest information on Helene right here.

THIS WEEK:

Rain showers and weak storms moved in Tuesday as a cold front moved through West Tennessee and lingering a littler on Wednesday. We didn’t see much in the way of severe storms but a few gusty storms or hail producers will popped up, but most of us will just encountered some scattered heavy rain showers. A few showers could linger on Wednesday night but overall Wednesday night and Thursday morning will be mostly dry.

Highs on Tuesday and Wednesday hit the low 80s but most of the week, due to the clouds and showers, highs will only reach the mid 70s and we will likely stay that way through the weekend. Morning lows will hang in the low 60s as well for the next few days. The winds will came out of the west Tuesday, turned to the north Wednesday, and will come out of the Northeast Thursday and then vary in direction the rest of the week and weekend as the tropical system moves through the area and stalls out for a few days.

THE WEEKEND:

Hurricane Helene became a tropical storm on Tuesday, a hurricane on Wednesday and is forecast to become a major cat panhandle of Florida just south of Tallahassee. The storm forecast could shift some, but we are expecting the storm to turn back to the northwest as making landfall and stalling out across West Tennessee. There is a decent shot at another 3-6″ rain coming up from Thursday evening until Monday morning for many of us. We are not expecting severe weather or extreme winds locally, but heavy rain seems more likely than not as of now from the system.

The system will keep the temperatures down and keep up under the clouds all weekend long. The winds will vary in direction around the stalled out system. Two different low pressure systems will dance around the Mid South this weekend and create what is called the Fugiwhara effect. The Fujiwhara effect is a rare phenomenon that occurs when two cyclonic vortices, such as hurricanes or tornadoes, get close enough to each other to rotate around a common center point. The effect is named after Japanese meteorologist Sakuhei Fujiwhara. For us, that means we could be stuck under two stalled out low pressure systems creating similar weather for several days in a row… meaning cloudy and rainy weather for a few days.