Get ready for periods of heavy rain tonight into Tuesday as Fred, which made landfall earlier near Cape San Blas, FL, continues its northward trek through Alabama and Georgia tonight into Tuesday. Deep tropical moisture will be the name of the game, and models show a feeder band-like feature off of the Atlantic coming up through the area early Tuesday morning. There’s a chance that the band could be moving through the area during the morning rush, so that’s certainly a trend to watch closely. We should see a lull followed by another renewed round of showers and thunderstorms as daytime heating takes hold. All in all, NWS is forecasting another 1-3” of rain (with locally higher amounts) before it’s all said and done Tuesday night.

Given the eastward nudge in Fred’s track over the last day, we’ll be keeping an additional eye out in case conditions become marginally favorable for severe weather closer to the Lowcountry. Right now, it looks like the bulk of the severe risk will stay to our west and northwest, cutting through Georgia into the Upstate. Still, shear profiles suggest that there could be a small window for severe storms late tonight into tomorrow. It may not be the worst idea to have your weather radios in the on and alerting position overnight, just to be safe. It’s important to note that this is not another Elsa: the center of circulation is much further to the west this go-around, and that in turn keeps the more favorable tornado parameters west.

Temperatures will predictably remain suppressed in the mid-80s given the prevalent cloud cover and rainfall. This remains a few degrees below normal for August.

Henri joins Grace in the Atlantic basin

We have a new tropical storm this evening: Tropical Storm Henri, which was previously Tropical Depression Eight, has 40 MPH winds as it moves south-southwest at 7 MPH around Bermuda. The NHC forecast track does have Henri remaining at Tropical Storm strength as it moves westward through Thursday. Late Thursday or early Friday, Henri is expected to take a hard right turn and go north, essentially looping around Bermuda. This one might be a wave-maker, but beyond that, this currently looks to stay well east of us. We’ll keep an eye on it for misbehavior.

Meanwhile, Tropical Depression Grace continues its overall southerly trend as it emerges from Hispaniola still reasonably intact. It’s expected to strengthen back to a Tropical Storm by tomorrow as it heads west-northwest through the Caribbean. This storm looks to stay well to the south, with no recurvature concerns back toward our coast; indeed, the NHC forecast is for it to clip the Yucatan Peninsula on Thursday, become a hurricane by Friday, and make a second landfall in Mexico sometime Saturday.

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