Feb 28-March 1st Rainfall

While HPC has been going back and forth with there rainfall totals..Here at R.W.S we are not changing a thing from what was issued on Saturday as  our final map. Just a few hours ago around 9 pm they had reduced rainfall totals over a good part of the region to only .50-.75…as of 1 AM ..they are now back to around an inch over most of PA.

I am not really sure what they had seen to make them change there minds to downgrade the rainfall amounts to begin with. The only thing that crosses ones mind here at R.W.S is the 00z NAM which only showed .25-.50 across the region with more to the north and more to the south.

As you can see by the radar rain is overspreading the area and some of it is rather heavy. Now what we are concerned about for tomorrow is if you look off to the west just east of Oklahoma you are going to see a squall line developing. This squall line is producing a Tornado watch from parts of Ok northeast into Illinois and Indiana..

So here is the concern. We started talking several days about this storm taking a further north track then the last event which brought the heavy rains and the microburst wind damage into SNJ. And as you can see by the image below:

This further north track is indeed occurring. Now what this has allowed last evening and the early morning hours here so far is for the warm air to start surging towards the north. Temperatures now are warmer then they were all previous yesterday..

The concern is that this is going to allow the temperatures to probably climb into the 60s and approach 70 degrees and this is because of the warm front that is lifting north.

Now…with warm air surging northward ..it will be very vital as to how far north this warm front makes it before the cold front starts advancing towards the region. Remember part of severe weather development is the contrast in temperatures..so where that warm front makes it will be the dividing line between colder air to the north and warmer air to the south and could set the stage for some severe storms as that squall line comes towards the east.

So look for heavy rain in the early morning hours and then perhaps some sunshine before round 2 (squall line) moves back in providing more heavy rains along with the potential for severe thunderstorms which will contain strong gusty winds and at the present time can not rule out an isolated tornado.

Stay tuned for updates as needed..