Rainy And Windy Into The Weekend
Saturday Morning Update
WBBJ 7 Forecast Update:
Post tropical cyclone Helene is still slowly crawling the the west today. The storm will stall out and not move much at all on Saturday. The storm will slowly move east on Sunday and dissipate, but not before dropping another 1-2″ of rain across West Tennessee before it stops. Rain will continue right on into Saturday and Sunday. Please be careful if you will be traveling on the roads and avoid flooded streets if at all possible.
Well if you are sick of the rain, I have some bad news for you. The rain will continue this evening and all night long. Most of us will continue to see the rain on Saturday with the highest amounts this weekend likely northeast of Jackson. The winds will pick up some tonight and still could gust as high as 40 MPH. The winds will remain breezy on Saturday. It appears the rain will begin to wrap up on Sunday. Most locations have already seen between 1-3″ of rain and an additional 1-3″ of rain appears to be coming through Saturday evening. Catch the latest local forecast and find out when the sun is coming back right here.
Most of the high school football games across West Tennessee were moved to Thursday night to avoid the heavy rain and wind coming on Friday but there are still a few being played tonight. There were a few spotty showers and it was a tad breezy Thursday night but the rain really increased Friday morning and not stopped since. Heavy rain and gusty winds are likely to continue Friday night. Flood watches and wind advisories have also been issued through Saturday morning. The highest rain amounts and strongest winds will be in our northern counties.
THIS WEEK:
Rain showers and weak storms moved in Tuesday as a cold front moved through West Tennessee and lingered into 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 pop up Thursday evening and impact a few of the games but most of them stayed dry until the 4th quarter. It became breezy Thursday night into Friday morning but the strongest winds are coming in this evening. The heavy bands of rain the moved in Friday morning will continue for the first half of the weekend.
Flood watches and wind advisories have also been issued through Saturday morning. The flood watch includes all of West Tennessee although the highest amounts will be near the Kentucky border. The wind advisory is for basically north of I-40. It will be breezy for everyone but gusts to 40 MPH or higher will likely stay north of I-40.
Highs on Tuesday and Wednesday hit the low 80s but for the rest of the week, due to the clouds and showers, highs will only reach the low to 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 came 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 strongest winds will come out of the north/northwest Friday evening/night but will remain breezy on Saturday.
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 east 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 Sunday 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 heavy rain should move out for the back half of the weekend but some light rain may linger even into Monday morning for some us. Most of next week looks cool, dry and very fall like.
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.
Storm Team Chief Meteorologist
Joel Barnes
Facebook: @JoelBarnesWeather
Twitter: @JoelBarnes13
Instagram: @joelbarnes13
