So far, autumn has been gorgeous here in the Tuscarawas Valley. We’ve had plenty of sun and temperatures have been relatively mild. We could use some rain, though.
The big national weather story this week is Hurricane Delta. Delta will be the 10th named tropical system to impact the US this year when it makes landfall along the Gulf Coast later in the week. That will break the record of 9 tropical cyclones from 1916.
Moisture from Delta is forecast to move towards Ohio by early next week. It’s a bit too soon yet to know how much moisture we’ll see locally, but it looks likely that we will end up with some rain from the remnants. At this point, rainfall does not look excessive.
Official National Hurricane Center forecast for Hurricane Delta including post landfall forecast cone as of 8:00 AM EDT 10/07/2020As of Wednesday morning, Delta is currently over the Yucatan near Cancun, Mexico as a CAT 2 hurricane. It will continue to weaken while over land but Delta will re-intensify once it emerges over open water. NHC forecasts that Delta will strengthen back to a CAT 4 before making landfall along the Gulf Coast on Friday.
Delta will weaken again once it moves northeast over the deep south through the weekend. The remnants will spread rain showers north into the Ohio Valley possible as early as Sunday night.
With regard to our forecast, I’ve included low chances for rain Sunday night into Monday. This will likely change as the models get a better handle on the overall pattern and track. There is not much confidence in the forecast due to the large differences between the modeling this far out.
Total rainfall locally for the first 6 days of October is 0.25″. That gives us a deficit of 0.30″ to date. That’s on top of the 2.20″ deficit from September.
If you have outdoor plans for the weekend, pay particular attention to the prosepcts for showers – especially Sunday. We’ll know more about how much rain could impact our area once the storm makes landfall.
