WxRecap: It Rained A Lot

There was a fairly widespread event today for Bowling Green Weather, so I will do a quick recap on today’s events across the region. We were established within ridge across the eastern portion of the United States, but within the northern portion of that, a mesoscale convective system (MCS) was able to develop and move east-southeastward within the midlevel flow.

Temps got into the lower 80s by midday, with dewpoints residing in the mid 60s. This helped to destabilize the atmosphere, and provide a lot of moisture for the storms to work with. h/t KY Mesonet
Temps got into the lower 80s by midday, with dewpoints residing in the mid 60s. This helped to destabilize the atmosphere, and provide a lot of moisture for the storms to work with. h/t KY Mesonet
The radar loop for today as the MCS made its way towards us. Note that cells train over BG for several frames. h/t SPC
The radar loop for today as the MCS made its way towards us. Note that cells train over BG for several frames. h/t SPC

Often times, MCS’ take on a life of their own, and move towards the greatest source of moisture and instability. Today, that was us. Our region had plentiful boundary layer moisture, and this helped to create a fairly unstable environment.

There was plentiful instability for the MCS to move towards and thrive in. h/t SPC
There was plentiful instability for the MCS to move towards and thrive in. h/t SPC

There were a few severe thunderstorm warnings across the region, but this was largely due in part to the high values of instability present across the region. This resulted in a couple reports of hail, and I think one damaging wind report. The reason we didn’t see more severe weather across the region was due to a lack of wind shear across the region. This is the changing of direction of wind or magnitude of wind speed with height, and this helps to organize storms. The real result of today was flooding.

The storms moved into a region with weak storm motions, and deep moisture content in the atmosphere, and it resulted in flash flooding across Bowling Green and across surrounding areas. There were two flash flood warnings issued for a large chunk of the region, and for good reason too. Bowling Green saw 3″ of rainfall in less than 2 hours, and this came after nearly 2″ of rain fell yesterday!

Total precipitation for the day in BG. We had 3" in about 1.5 hours! h/t KY Mesonet
Total precipitation for the day in BG. We had 3″ in about 1.5 hours! h/t KY Mesonet

All in all, this created flooding issues across town, and was an intense lightning producer. An interesting day for Bowling Green Weather, that is for sure.