Monday, July 6, 2009

Feast-or-famine rainfall on the holiday weekend


The Mid-South (or, a lot of it perhaps) finally got some much needed rainfall over the weekend. After a strong of 20 days with no recorded rain and high temps in the 90s every day, a cold front settled through the area Sunday. Many areas saw a pretty good amount of rain, while others (like my own) barely got enough to keep from having to water again in a few days. The attached precip totals image from the Memphis Doppler radar tells the story. It shows estimated precipitation totals from the morning of July 4 through this morning. The color scale in the lower-right shows the amount of precip in inches.

The image clearly illustrates the feast-or-famine nature of this weekend's rain. Southern middle TN, part of northwest TN, much of north MS and central AR got their fair share, while most of northeast AR missed out. I'd like to highlight Shelby Co. particularly - right in the center of the map. The extreme north part of the county (Millington to Arlington) saw 1-2", the southern part (Whitehaven to Hickory Hill to Collierville) also saw 1-2"+, while the center part of the county, especially north of I-40 (Frayser to Bartlett to Cordova), got less than a 1/4". WXLIVE! recorded a total of 0.09", while flash flooding occurred just a few miles north in Millington! See the pictures below taken from WXLIVE!'s location looking north at the Millington storms Sunday afternoon. (click each for a larger view)

The heavy rain, unfortunately, took a toll as one little boy lost his life after being swept out of a retention pond and into a sewer system in Millington. Folks, weather can be dangerous! Please be cautious of things like lightning, flooding, heat, and high wind. It's not just tornadoes that will kill you!

As a follow-up to the Fourth of July, I'd also like to share with you an interesting post from the blog CloudyandCool.com on Fireworks and Air Pollution. I think you might find in interesting.

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3 comments:

Tigers Football said...

1.75 inches here is South Central Fayette County.

Meteorologist Erik Proseus said...

Yeah, you guys got some good rain over there for sure, John! That reading lines up well with radar estimates.

--Erik, MemphisWeather.net

mspaddler said...

Hi Eric

We have been in the St Juan Islands since the 4th of July, did Downtown Memphis get any rain this week.

Brian