When we see a powerful line of thunderstorms approaching Alabama, you can rest assured that we are in for trouble. We also know that we are in for good rain amounts as we continue to go through drought recovery. Sometimes the bad outweighs the good and sometimes the good outweighs the bad.
I would have to say the bad outweighed the good late yesterday and last night. I remember telling someone that this line of storms, instead of uprooting hundreds of trees, would uproot literally thousands of trees.
No way we will ever know exactly how many trees came down, but it has to be in the thousands.
We could also see from lightning detection equipment that we were in for a spell that would sound like a fireworks manufacturing plant exploding. The lightning was especially severe last night.
Now, let’s discuss the good side of the story. Amazingly, some places in West/Central and South Alabama got virtually no rain, but there were a lot of beneficial amounts. Here is a complete list, and please see some special notes, at the end of the list.
1.43 Rocky Ridge/Hoover (20.98 so far in 2008)
1.00 West side of Vernon
0.12 Cottondale
1.99 Clay/Pinson (Womack Road)
1.67 SE Trussville
2.01 South Trussville
2.02 NE Trussville
1.65 Vigo (east of Piedmont)
3.70 Brilliant
0.12 Cottondale
1.40 Hokes Bluff
0.87 Auburn
1.53 Birmingham Airport
0.68 Shelby County Airport
1.40 Huntsville Airport
0.40 Muscle Shoals
1.87 Pinson
2.06 South Pinson (Carson/Red Hollow Road)
1.27 Bankhead National Forest
0.66 Ft. Payne
0.73 Decatur
1.06 Crossville
0.47 Albertville
1.24 Ashland
0.67 Alexander City
3.00 Hamilton
2.05 Oneonta
2.40 Palmerdale
1.03 Blue Pond (Cherokee County)
1.94 Cordova
0.99 Dearmandville
0.81 Ellisville
1.37 Gaylesville
0.97 Horseshoe Bend
0.68 Wadley
1.29 Wilsonville
1.12 Wadley (we get more than one report)
1.51 Martin Dam
1.56 Centre (Weiss Dam)
1.23 Gadsden
1.24 Neely Henry Dam
1.12 Logan Martin Dam
1.34 Childersburg
0.67 Lay Dam
1.07 Mitchell Dam
1.30 Jordan Dam
1.53 Smith Dam
1.38 Ashville
1.10 Concord/Hueytown
0.00 Marion (thats right, not a drop)
1.23 Muscadine
Trace Coker
0.79 Black Creek
1.58 Clay (off Deerfoot Parkway)
1.92 Inverness
1.50 Hayden
0.88 Alabaster
1.61 Greystone Farms
2.03 Noccalula Falls
0.02 U of A
1.57 Jacksonville
BIRMINGHAM DEFICIENCY DISAPPEARS
We had become accustomed to a rain deficiency at Birmingham Airport. Last night that all changed when the area was drenched with 1.53 inches of rain. So, we now have a 0.67 EXCESS. We hardly know how to spell excess.
EXTRA NOTES
* Wally Coker has an excellent web site from his private weather station in Clay off Deerfoot Parkway. He reminds us that at 2:04 a.m. today lightning detection equipment was showing 1,857 lightning strikes per minute in this storm system.
* Alston Keath is the ABC 33/40 skywatcher in Inverness. He reported 1.92 inches of rain, but he mentioned that at 2:28 a.m. it was raining so hard that it would have amounted to 10.29 inches for a full hour. Of course, it rarely rains that hard for a full hour. Alston also reported 3.75 inches of rain since Friday.
THANKS TO BILL MURRAY
Even though Bill was very sick, he did a yeoman’s job keeping the 33/40 blog updated last night. He and I usually share blog duties in the heat of battle. I had to bail out to do wall-to-wall radio coverage, for three hours without a break, on a network of three Birmingham stations because of tornado warnings. By the time I almost finished the continuous coverage, the lightning was so vicious that I got knocked out of service for an hour. All of our computers went down and we thought we had lightning damage, so I was not much help and I apologize. The lightning was so close that it popped in my phone and that popping sound went out over the air. You bet I was frightened. I am chicken when it comes to road rage, snakes of any size and lightning.
