Slow-moving, torrential rainstorms were deluging parts of western Kentucky, southern Illinois and southeast Missouri on Wednesday morning, producing severe flash flooding that was entering homes, stranding vehicles and inundating entire neighborhoods.
As of midmorning, the Weather Service office in Paducah estimated that 4 to 6 inches of rain had fallen in West Paducah, and 6 to 8 inches in Mayfield and surrounding rural areas. Those values are probably conservative. Another 1 to 4 inches of rain is likely through early afternoon, meaning a few locations could see a foot or more when all is said and done.
Paducah’s Barkley Airport had logged 6.28 inches of rain as of 8:50 a.m. Central time. An exceptional 2.32 inches of rain fell between 6:53 and 7:53 a.m.; that’s the third-greatest single-hour rainfall total recorded at the airport. Already, the 4.4 inches that fell at the airport can be considered a hundred-year rain event, meaning it has less than a 1 percent likelihood of happening in any given year. A nearby station in Paducah also picked up 5.87 inches in six hours, which would be a 200-year rain event.10.45 inches in Graves County, according to Kentucky Mesonet.6.84 inches in Paducah.4.68 inches in New Concord, Ky.in a few rural areas in between weather stations.
It’s estimated that the threshold for a thousand-year rain event, or one that has a 0.1 percent chance of striking a location in a particular year, is 9.83 inches in 24 hours. Therefore, the 10-inch totals qualify the ongoing event as a thousand-year storm.The heavy rain developed along a stagnant boundary known as a stationary frontIt marks the divide between a cooler, drier air mass to the northeast and a warmer, moisture-rich Gulf of Mexico air mass banked to the southwest.
That stationary front serves as the focus for downpours, which ride along it like rail cars on a track. That induces what meteorologists call “training,” which means exceptionally heavy rainfall continues to move over the same area.It also is a recipe for the process by which humid air rides up and over a shallower lip of cooler/denser air. That acts as a ramp to pump moisture high into the atmosphere, forming clouds and bands of intense precipitation.
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