Itâs finally raining, Alabama! What to expect next week
Parts of Alabama were finally seeing rain on Friday in the midst of the state’s ongoing drought.
The rain was light for the most part, and the National Weather Service was not expecting much, if any, thunder and no severe weather today.
Forecasters are expecting today’s rain to spread south and east through the day and into tonight.
Then additional weather systems will pass through over the weekend, bringing additional rounds of very welcome showers.
The rain could add up to an inch or so in parts of Alabama over the weekend, but the weather service said that won’t be enough to end the ongoing drought across the state.
Parts of northeast Alabama on Thursday were upgraded to “exceptional” drought — or Level 4 out of 4 according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and extreme and severe drought also expanded to include more of the state.
Alabama’s drought got worse in the past week, with the worst drought category, Level 4, taking hold in the northeast part of the state. Extreme drought, or Level 3, also expanded across the northern and southern parts of the state.U.S. Drought Monitor
But the weather service said there could be additional chances for rain going into next week — and those rains have the potential to be real soakers that could begin to moisten up soils and tamp down wildfire dangers.
Here is the seven-day precipitation outlook from NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center. It suggests that parts of Alabama could get 3 to even 4 inches of rain over the next week:
The next seven days could bring even more rain to Alabama. This is the precipitation outlook for the next seven days, and it shows Alabama getting a good soaking rain next week.WPC
The area right now forecast to see the most is southwest Alabama, one of the most parched areas of the state.
Even the weather service was a bit giddy about the prospect of more rain next week. The NWS in Mobile added this to its morning forecast discussion: “Now things get a little more interesting and whoever is asking for the rain, keep up the good work.”
As of Friday it appeared the most rain was expected to fall Tuesday into Wednesday, according to the weather service. It could linger later into the week but that’s highly uncertain at this point.
Forecasters will also be watching carefully in case too much falls too quickly and leads to flooding concerns. The weather service noted that it may not seem like an issue considering the drought, but at this point in parts of the state the ground is so dry that it may not be able to soak up a lot of rain at a rapid rate.
“If you go into your yard and turn your hose on you`ll probably just make a big mud pit with very little of it actually soaking up. This is why when it rains in a desert, even an inch of rain turns into a flash flood,” the weather service wrote in a Friday morning forecast discussion.
The weather service doesn’t expect severe weather to be a factor next week, either, and NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center doesn’t have any part of the state in severe weather risk.
Here are some outlooks from the state’s National Weather Service offices: