Tropical Storm Lee to Bring Heavy Rains, and Flooding to Parts of Southeast

First off, we need the rain in the western Carolinas, part of Georgia and other parts of the Southeast, where the 2nd hottest Summer on record combined with well below normal rainfall to create dwindling water supplies. Check out Hickory Creek in south Shelby, one of the major tributaries to First Broad.  It looks like its nearly dried up, and never fully recovered from when it did completely stop flowing in October 2007. Normally, this stream is pretty large, ironically if it were at full stream now, it would be nearly exactly how the First Broad River looks now.

As the remnants of Lee come inland, if the models are right on its slow movement, nearly all the interior Southeast states are looking at a major rain, long duration event, similar to what happened with "Fay" in 2008.  Shelby receieved around 7" of rain in two days, and parts of the area got over 10", it will come down to small scale factors as to who gets how much. Normally, the upslope favored regions of the mountains in western NC and far northeast Georgia do well in these types of events, so the Nantahala and Chattahooche and Pisgah Forest regions will be the recipients of the most rain award when all is said and done.  Parts of Mississippi and Alabama closer to the center of circulation and enhanced lifting caused by a squeeze play of the front becoming orthogonal to the flow also will max out on some heavy totals, possibly exceeding 10" there.  Flash Flood Watches are issued in a large part of the Southeast.

 

asBy Monday afternoon heavy rain will be falling across the western Carolinas all the way back to Mississippi as strong upslope flow comes into the higher terrrain of the Carolinas, and feeder bands from the Gulf continue to spiral inland around the main center in lower Alabama. From here the models aren't quite sure whether the center will get swept northeast totally, or be left to lolligag in Alabama. Most keep the system west of the Appalachians, so this will allow a wedge type of front to drop into the Carolinas east of the mountains, which would ultimately allow heavy rain to ramp up for the western third of the Carolinas, in addition to dropping our temperatures greatly on Tuesday. Another consequence would be enhanced lifting from the front itself, in addition to the center of "lee" still being well west. Even if a dry slot opens up , the mid level flow would wring out moisture efficiently over the southeast facing slopes of the NC, SC and GA mountains, where grand weekly totals would surpass 12" if , thats IF the models are right in the synoptic placement of Lee, the front, and everything else. Hard to say yet. But regardless, heavy rains will occur, the only question is just how much. There's a huge difference between 5" over 3 days and 10" or even more over about 5 days.  Its definitely one of the wetter weeks in a while, possibly the wettest in several years, and some towns could get 15 to 20 PERCENT of their annual  average rainfall this week. 

Rainfall Totals Through Wednesday PM