The one sure thing in our forecast is that we’re in for a good bit of rain the next few days.  Quite a bit of uncertainty creeps in when we try and fill in the details.

For one thing, we’re likely to have several rounds of rain and thunderstorms.  Tonight and Wednesday may bring some shower activity and a few rumbles.  The bulk of our rain could come later on Wednesday, during the night and into part of Thursday.  And even then we still might not be finished; enough moisture could stick around until Friday to give us another round or two of showers.

All this unsettled weather is the consequence of an complex upper level trough and associated low pressure waves at the surface.  The entire system will take its time slowly working its way from the central U.S. into the eastern part of the country.  It may take until the weekend for dry, stable air to finally kick the rain out of here but at least the temperatures are not going back to winter-type readings anytime soon.

Since we’re into March, which is our peak severe weather season here, we’ll be keeping an eye on  that possibility.  Computer models right now are cool on this system spawning any severe storms this far to the east, but sometimes a late-hour change in the air mass can suddenly ramp up the possibility of strong storms and even tornadoes, given the overall look of this pattern.  Heavy rain still appears to be the biggest and most likely threat, but if it is spaced out and doesn’t come all at once we shouldn’t have any problems there, either.  Rainfall has actually been below normal since the beginning of February, helping to dry things out just a bit and making the Chattahoochee Valley less flood-prone for now.

kschmitz@wtvm.com