WEEKEND FLOOD POTENTIAL

Written by: Bob Metcalfe

Flooding has been the focal point of the forecast for the past few days, with some snowcover still remaining on the ground, the ground being saturated by many days of melting, and the potential for a decent amount of rain over a fairly short amount of time starting Saturday.

First and foremost, I'd like to address the St. Patty's Day parade weather. It's a coinflip! Models are doing a particularly horrible job in timing and location of precip with this system we're in right now, with no indication of the rain that we saw early this morning. They then are tending to delay the onset of steady rain until we're well into Saturday afternoon. My feelings are that the models are wrong. I believe we'll see a good pickup by late morning and midday, peak time for us parade watchers/walkers.

The bulk of the rain will fall Saturday evening/overnight into the first half of Sunday morning. I see a range of a half inch to an inch in the harder hit spots. However, the bulk of the heavy rain will be well southeast of WNY. Therefore, flood-prone areas should be aware over the course of the weekend, but I don't see widespread problematic flooding for all areas this weekend. Those of you who live in those "flood-prone" areas know who you are, near small streams, valleys, low-lying areas etc.

The image above is a pretty cool little forecast tool you can find at coolwx. com. It's an hourly plot of precipitation going out just over 3 days. If you look at the "total" in the top left, its just over a half inch for Rochester now through the weekend. That isn't to say that some areas won't see higher numbers. In fact, I KNOW several areas will see more rain than that.

So while there's no need to build an ark at this point, just be aware and keep an eye on that sump pump this weekend. And see you at the parade, where I'd strongly caution you to bring an umbrella.