Thursday will be Weather Authority Alert Day

With potentially heavy rains, it's our 4th alert day in 3 weeks

Here we go again, with more disruptive downpours and a Weather Authority Alert Day.(Thursday)

Jacksonville, Fla. – The past three weeks have brought us a lot of rain, some storms, one EF-3 tornado and a "here we go again" Thursday. Tomorrow will be a Weather Authority Alert Day for more potentially heavy rains that we call "disruptive downpours." These are characterized by near-flooding rains that seemingly last and last. Tomorrow will be one of those days.

Expect another 1-2" of rain across much of the area. That includes all of Southeast Georgia (SEGA) and Northeast Florida (NEFL.) Despite the recent heavy rains, remember parts of South Georgia have seen nearly 15" of rain this month already, I don't believe these rains on Thursday will be flooding rains. Just disruptive to your outdoor plans, including traveling, shopping, getting to and back from school and work.

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The National Weather Service has just issued a flood watch for the entire Jacksonville area. A Flood WATCH means there is NO FLOODING occurring at the moment but flooding could develop with the anticipated weather moving into the area (Tomorrow.)

The Weather Authority  is looking for between 1-2” of rain and this is below the criteria for flooding. However, we are looking for LOCALIZED areas that may see some flooding, as always, the usual suspects need to be monitored including McCoys creek, Black Creek, Cassat Ave., etc.

Timing is all over the map, as of early Wednesday morning forecast models have not come to a consensus. Best guess is that lighter rains may streak into the Jacksonville area early on Thursday morning, but it won't be until around the lunch hour that the really heavy bands of rains start to make an impact. 

The Weather Authority Alert Day will begin at 6 a.m. and stretch into the afternoon hours. 

Other weather issues we will have to contend with? Include gusty non-thunderstorm winds. These are winds that are just your typical winds, except on Thursday, despite the rains, our winds will gust upward of 20-25 mph. Making those expected rains even nastier.

Severe weather threat will remain well south of Jacksonville, mainly along the I-4 corridor of Central Florida. Yet, I wouldn't be too surprised if we saw one or two severe thunderstorm warnings in Putnam, Flagler, maybe St. Johns counties. Timing on those storms would more likely be in the afternoon or early evening hours, say between 2-6 p.m.

Primary severe weather threat will be for small hail, up to an inch in size and gusty thunderstorm winds up to 60 mph. Here's some inside baseball meteorological information. These storms will be traveling up to 40 mph in the afternoon and evening hours. Which also means they will quickly catch you off guard.

Here are some of the expectations for tomorrow.

The EURO - Is by far the wettest model suggesting we could see flooding rains. Recently this model has been too wet in its forecast so I am discounting this one for now.
The GFS - Suggest two bigger bands of rains. One into SEGA and the otther well south of Jacksonille.
RPM - This model should handle convective (storms) conditions best, suggest the worst of the rains will be south of Jacksonville.