Drought Buster or Simply Drought Relief?

As most of you are aware, it's been a significantly drier than normal late summer period and coupled with the endless summer heat, most of PA has been identified by the USDA drought monitor as being abnormally dry...take a look.

Even the Susquehanna River is in in lowest 25 percentile of discharge for this time of year; a far cry from this time 41 years ago when many of you will remember Hurricane Eloise.  First, today's discharge as measured at City Island.  The brown triangles represent the median flow for each day the last month.  We are well below the norms...

And a brief reminder of aforementioned Hurricane Eloise...she rained herself out over the northern mid-Atlantic and we suffered here in south central PA.

So now we are faced with a blocked 500 mb upper level low that will slowly migrate over the lower Ohio Valley the next 4-5 days before slowly filling and lifting away.  With that said, rain of varying intensity will be in our area for the next several days...starting...well...now as I pound these keys.  So the next question is how much rain will fall.  I'll show you the total precip by Sunday first with the Euro...it is BY FAR the most bullish for rain amounts.  I can see it happening, but this amount is unlikely come Sunday (5+" for KMDT)

Next, the GFS (Global Forecast System from the USA)...a tad more reasonable.

And lastly, the very consistent NAM.  This model has been rock steady over the last several runs! It has been targeting the very western portion of the Susquehanna Valley and the Laurel Highlands with the axis of heaviest rain. Here is its latest...

Here's the official guidance from the NWS for precip total ending Saturday evening...that is quite wet to be sure!

And just to keep things interesting for next week, Matthew is brewing in the Caribbean and the GFS wants to keep us on our toes...gut feeling, this storm will end up further east than shown below...I hope!

OK...gotta run.  Enjoy this timely Eric Clapton tune...and root for the NAM!

Smitty

AA:  Rainy and quite wet next few days.  Be careful what you wish for!  By the way, a hurricane up the coast might be the only way to stop your BoSox this year!