Friday Morning Forecast 09/27/2024

Friday: Mostly cloudy. Low: 72°F
Friday Night: Mostly cloudy. High: 61°F
Saturday: Mostly cloudy. Low: 76°F
Saturday Night: Clouds breaking. High: 60°F
Sunday: Partly cloudy. Low: 77°F
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General Discussion:
Hurricane Helene has offically made landfall as the strongest hurricane to hit the Florida Panhandle in recorded history. As this storm continues pushing further into the South and Midwest the remnants will be felt through clouds, rain and wind. – Iffrig
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Forecasters: Collier, Scheerer, Iffrig
Date Issued: 09/27/2024 9:00 AM CDT
Technical Discussion:
Key Messages:

• Hurricane Helene will bring elevated levels of moisture and clouds to the forecast area.
• Chances for precipitation Friday remain uncertain.
  

Apart from the major hurricane slamming into the southern United States, the weather around our CWA is relatively quiet. As Helene pushes northward bringing its low pressure along with it, clouds will remain persistent around the area throughout most of the weekend. With relative humidity values remaining high (80-100%) alongside the presence of elevated wind divergence and vorticity from Helene, this is providing ideal conditions for cloud formation and their persistence. The NBM suggests clouds will begin breaking around Sunday and this tracks as the storm will begin to fall apart and return to a more uniform weather pattern.

The potentiality for rain remains a mystery as the current storm tracks see the most elevated chances for precipitation being located to our south and west. However, if the storm shifts 30 to 50 miles to the west, our CWA could see elevated chances for high levels of precipitation and the chances for flash flooding. The highest forecasted levels for Southeastern Missouri are sitting in the 1 to 3 inches in an hour. This level of rainfall brings about increased chances for flash flooding seeing as much of the area has been in a drought and the moisture will have nowhere to go other than streams and creeks. As it stands right now, our areas is not expecting any rain but as aforementioned, if the storm moves, those chances could increase drastically.

As the weekend begins to draw to a close and the storm moves out of the region, we can expect to see clouds breaking and weather starting to return to fall like conditions as a high pressure region begins to creep over the plains. However, the chance for a very sharp decrease in temperatures cannot be ruled out as there are very strong indications of a very potent cold front moving with a powerful trough as the week begins again. Future forecast shifts should watch for this trough to increase and this cold front to move through.

-Iffrig