Goodbye Super Rainy July!

Today is the last day of July 2017, which will go down as one of the wettest months in Central Ohio's history. The rain that fell this month was locally heavy. So much so that there's almost a 4" difference in how much rain fell at my house and how much fell at the airport... a mere 12 mile difference.

If the NWS used the total for Canal Winchester, then this month would have been the wettest month in history for Columbus. The current record is 12.36" in July of 1992. As of now I have recorded 12.87" of rain. The airport has only picked up 8.55" of rain. I'm also at 31.82" for the year so far which would put us on pace for a top 10 wettest years.

This map is the most telling of how wet it's been, showing a good portion of Central Ohio was 200-300% of normal precip for the month!

Looking back at 1992 when we had our previous wettest month, the rest of the year was pretty dry. We ended up with a little over 38" of rain for the year and the rest of the months were at or below normal for precip. But just for fun I checked, and the winter of '92-'93 also had 30" of snow. So... there's that! Do not take that as a direct correlation to our wet month, just a fun observation.

Now our pattern is changing again to a cooler and drier August. Will that hold up?

LiveBlog: Serious Flood Threat for Central Ohio

LiveBlog: 11:02am
We're under a Flood Watch all day today, but here we are at 11:02am and I've already received 2.11" of rain at my house. Locations in northern Ohio have flood warnings as they've gotten over 3" already. If we're not even to noon and this is our accumulation for the day...

...then I'm afraid to see how the day ends.

For us here in Central Ohio, morning thunderstorms have not only had huge rainfall rates, but have continued to redevelop and train over the same areas. If this trend continues along and just south of the I-70 corridor, I expect to see flood warnings sooner than later.

UPDATE: 11:17am
Lets also not forget that we're already completely saturated from heavy rains over the past week. Here's the past 7 days of rainfall from the AHPS. Keep in mind, this does not include most of today's rainfall. I'm currently at 5.45" of rain in 7 days and counting:

UPDATE: 11:31am
Here's another fun stat: 13 days in to July and I have already recorded 7.18" of rain at my house. That's not only the most I've gotten in any month this year, but doubles almost every other month also.

UPDATE: 1:00pm
For a short time we had a Flash Flood Warning for areas along and south of I-70 in Franklin, Licking and Fairfield Counties. The NWS reported rainfall of 3"+ in two hours near Pickerington.

I'm at 2.92" for the day, which is as much as I got for the entire month of May and more than February. Just crazy totals.

It's felt like we've been seeing the back edge of this rain for a while, but storms just keep regenerating. At this point it's hard to say how much longer the rain will keep up east of I-71:

UPDATE: 2:03pm
Wow. The last storm just brought my daily total to 4.01" of rain. I don't recall ever measuring this much in a day.

UPDATE: 4:27pm
Here's a timelapse from my weather cam of the storm that put me over the 4" mark for the day, as it causes some brief road flooding near a neighborhood intersection:

Unfortunately even more storms have started to fire off towards the west and head this way. Just about any amount of rain over the next several hours will cause instant roafd flooding for just about anywhere in Central Ohio.

LiveBlog: Big Storm Potential for Central Ohio

LiveBlog: 10:50am
The SPC just upgraded our severe risk today to Enhanced and issued a Severe Thunderstorm Watch all at once:

If these storms were a little further west, I'd start using the Derecho word to describe this potential setup. Instead I think we'll see them intensify as they enter our area. We have a lot of sunlight out ahead of these storms adding fuel to the fire, so for what feels like the first time in a very long time, our setup is actually favorable!

Mid level CAPE should soar over 2000 J/kg, and an uncapped environment should allow these cloud tops to soar too. That means expect some big hail potential and high winds as well. The SPC gives the highest probabilities to a high wind event for this, so by early afternoon I expect warnings to be extended out ahead of this cluster.

I'll update this blog as storms approach!
UPDATE: 1:52pm
Here come the storms, but without the punch we expected. No warnings in our area, and nothing more than a decent show of clouds and rain moving in: