Well as we look back again, we’re talking about another weekend in our rearview mirror another wet weekend. And let’s turn to Corey Davis climatologist with the state climate office of North Carolina to find out exactly what kind of an impact this one had. And I would say in a lot of areas, it was a really big one, wasn’t it?
It was, Mike, it gave us a rain event that overperformed our expectations. Last week, we were looking at some totals and maybe three to four inches and in some spots, you could see a little bit higher than that. What we ended up seeing was if you draw a line straight down the middle of North and South Carolina, east of that line, pretty much all those areas had at least two inches. We had widespread totals of at least three inches. And there was a swath from about Charleston, South Carolina, up through the southeastern North Carolina where they had more than six inches. And then right along the South Carolina coast north of Charleston, some areas had almost 15 inches of rain while most of that just falling on Sunday, but you had a very moist air coming in right off the Atlantic setting up in a rain band that was pretty much parked over those areas all day on Sunday. So some really incredible puddles and we’ve seen some incredible impacts this week as well. We’ve seen about flooding on roadways, we’ve seen bridges that have been washed out. Again, it just goes to show what a big turnaround we’ve had with this recent rainfall. It wasn’t long ago that we were talking about low streamflow levels. Some areas almost record low levels for this time of the year. And now we’re looking at flooding in those same areas.
It appears El Nino is here. So I have to ask: Any chance of a white Christmas in the Carolinas?
Well Mike, I don’t think the weather is going to respond to what the calendar tells us about the season. Let me ask you this. How does almost 70 degrees on Christmas Day sound to you?
Well, it would sound fine, especially if I were at the beach, which I wish I would be, but is that what we can look forward to?
It’s looking like that, and in fact we’re gonna keep warming up over the next few days really with the warmest temperatures coming on Monday. On Christmas afternoon, we’ll be steadily warming into the upper 50s and then into the 60s. Most areas that looks like can expect to be in the mid to upper 60s When some spots may be getting close to 70 degrees on Monday. And then by Monday night and especially early on Tuesday. It looks like we’ll have a better chance of rain. With a system coming in from the south. So at this point a little bit tough to tell exactly how much we might see but it is pretty safe to say that this will just be a rain event. It’ll be a warm Christmas. It may be a wet Christmas night in some areas. But we are not looking at a white Christmas this year in the Carolinas.