BLOG: Thursday Rains=Flooding?

We are done with the threat for severe weather, but now we have a waterlogged Thursday to contend with. This should not be a MAJOR flooding event across the Valley, but some minor problems can be expected.First, an animation of the simulated radar for the rest of the day today, according to the HRRR (High Resolution Rapid Refresh Model): How much rain are we talking about? I think the highest totals, with the highest risk for flooding will be east of I-79 in Pennsylvania. Here's the NOAA rain outlook for today and tonight....and this looks reasonable to me: Generally 1"-1.5" for extreme eastern Ohio, with amounts ramping up to 1.75"-2.0" around I-79. Amounts could approach 3" in central Pennsylvania.This has the support of the latest run of the SREF model. This is an "ensemble" model in which the initial weather conditions fed into the model are tweaked several times to see how much those small tweaks influence the model's solution. This is useful to forecasters as it can help us determine how much uncertainty there is in a forecast. Each line on the graph represents one of those "tweaks" and the average of all the runs is in the thick black line. In this case, the average rain forecasted is about 1.5": Flood Watches are up across the region: As far as river flooding goes, here's a look at the expected level of the Mahoning River at Leavittsburg:  A crest tonight just under minor flood stage (10 feet).The Mahoning River at Youngstown: Again, just below minor flood stage late today, tonight and Friday morning.We will keep you updated on the latest all day! Thanks for reading.