Yeah!!!! Rain!!!

I ended up with 0.32" of rain today, I'll take what I can get. Some areas around me got more than 1". But none of us got the rain they had in Alabama. Here's an excerpt from the Birmingham forecast office:

SOME VERY IMPRESSIVE RAINFALL TOTALS ACROSS CENTRAL ALABAMA.
SEVERAL LOCATIONS AROUND THE BIRMINGHAM METRO AREA RECEIVED OVER 7 INCHES OF RAIN. EVEN MORE IMPRESSIVE IS THE SWATH OF NEAR 10 INCH TOTALS IN SOUTHERN PIKE COUNTY.

I uploaded an image showing the rainfall totals for the last 18 hours from 6:30am on the 30th to 6:30pm on the 31st. Here's the link also:
http://www.daculaweather.com/images/2012_07/31_rain_total.png

You've done pretty well with rainfall at your place this year. Do you have any totals for the month/year?

A very nice thunderstorm will be entering north Gwinnett shortly. This storm has the potential for 1" hail and gusty winds. It's currently at Sugar Hill and headed SE toward Dacula.
http://www.daculaweather.com/grlevel4/4_ffc_br248.php

Tops on this storm are 50kft high and has already dropped more than an inch of rain around Cumming

* AT 419 PM EDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING QUARTER SIZED HAIL...AND
DAMAGING WINDS UP TO 60 MPH. THIS STORM WAS LOCATED NEAR
CUMMING...MOVING SOUTH AT 15 MPH.

* OTHER LOCATIONS IN THE WARNING INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO
FLOWERY BRANCH...REST HAVEN...BUFORD...SUGAR HILL...SUWANEE AND
DULUTH.

Potential hail areas in red
http://www.daculaweather.com/images/2012_08/hail_1.png

My parents live in Griffin and they got 6 inches of rain in just under 3 hours. They stayed up late drying out their basement. No rain here in Loganville.

I believe it. When was that? These storms that popup are very slow movers and with the air as moist as it is, it doesn't take long to drop a lot of rain as you can see from some of the rain totals I posted above. But the bad part is that many of us miss it. It's been a while since we've had a good soaker here. We might get lucky though over the next few weeks. The tropics are VERY active right now with a new wave moving off of the African coast. Couple that with TD Ernesto and a new area of interest off the east Florida coast and our chances might be on the increase for the potential for some tropical rainfall.

Here's a cool map showing rainfall amounts for all of the CoCoRaHS reporting stations. I'm bad about not reporting when there is no rain. You can choose a date and move the map anywhere you'd like.
http://www.daculaweather.com/4_cocorahs_precip_map.php

They got 6 inches Thursday night and an additional 2 inches Friday night.

Wow! That's great! The best I can do is last night when I had 0.98", but I'll take it. I was thinking we'd get some rain here today but I didn't have much here, I had to drive to Covington this morning and it was pouring down that direction.

This is a new update from the NWS. There numerous thunderstorms developing and moving toward our area. Here's the NWS update.

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION...UPDATED
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PEACHTREE CITY GA
123 PM EDT THU AUG 9 2012

APPROACHING SHORT WAVE WILL ALLOW FOR SCATTERED SHOWERS AND STORMS TODAY WITH GUSTY WINDS AND FREQUENT LIGHTNING EXPECTED. SOME STORMS LIKELY TO GET STRONG AND POSSIBLY LOW END SEVERE.

Here's your geek speak from the Storm Prediction Center regarding the weather today...

DISCUSSION...TWO PRIMARY LINES OF TSTMS CURRENTLY EXIST ACROSS THE
AREA. ONE IS MOVING EWD ACROSS ERN PORTIONS OF MIDDLE TN AND THE
OTHER IS MOVING EWD/SEWD ACROSS ERN/NERN AL. ANOTHER TSTM CLUSTER IS BEGINNING TO DEVELOP ACROSS PORTIONS OF NWRN GA. THE ENVIRONMENT ACROSS MUCH OF THIS AREA IS CHARACTERIZED BY DEWPOINTS IN THE LOW TO MID 70S AND TEMPERATURES IN THE 80S. 12Z SOUNDINGS AT BMX...FFC...AND TLH ALL DEPICT A MOIST AND DEEP WARM LAYER WITH FREEZING LEVELS ABOVE 13 KFT AND PWATS ABOVE 1.8 INCHES.

CLOUD BREAKS AHEAD OF THESE LINES SHOULD ALLOW AT LEAST MODEST
DESTABILIZATION AND LATEST RUC-BASED MESOANALYSIS INDICATES MLCAPE
AROUND 2000 J/KG IN ERN AL/WRN GA AND AROUND 1500 J/KG FARTHER N
ACROSS ERN TN. RAP-BASED MESOANALYSIS APPEARS TO HAVE WARMED THE
SURFACE TEMPERATURES MORE THAN CURRENTLY OBSERVED...LEADING TO
HIGHER ANALYZED MLCAPE VALUES. SHEAR APPEARS TO BE THE LIMITING
FACTOR REGARDING STORM INTENSITY. LATEST VAD PROFILES FROM BMX AND
FFC DEPICT ABOUT 25 KTS OF 0-6 KM BULK SHEAR. AS SUCH...IT APPEARS
MOST OF THE ACTIVITY WILL BE DRIVEN BY NEW DEVELOPMENT ALONG COLD
POOLS/OUTFLOW BOUNDARIES WITH LITTLE STORM ORGANIZATION. BRIEFLY
ENHANCED UPDRAFTS WILL RESULT IN THE POTENTIAL FOR PRECIPITATION
LOADING AND A FEW WET MICROBURSTS BUT THE OVERALL SEVERE THREAT IS
LOW. REGARDLESS...THIS AREA WILL BE MONITORED FOR SIGNS OF BETTER
STORM ORGANIZATION.

...SIGNIFICANT WEATHER ADVISORY FOR 45 MPH WINDS IN WALTON...
LUMPKIN...BARROW...DAWSON...FORSYTH...GWINNETT...HALL AND JACKSON
COUNTIES UNTIL 500 PM EDT...

AT 432 PM EDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED
STRONG THUNDERSTORMS FROM DAWSONVILLE TO ROSEBUD...MOVING EAST AT 10
MPH.

THESE STORMS HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO PRODUCE PEA SIZED HAIL...FREQUENT
CLOUD TO GROUND LIGHTNING AND WIND GUSTS TO 45 MPH AS THEY MOVE
ACROSS WALTON...LUMPKIN...BARROW...DAWSON...FORSYTH...GWINNETT...HALL
AND JACKSON COUNTIES THROUGH 500 PM EDT. SOME LOCATIONS IN THE PATH
OF THESE STORMS INCLUDE CENTERVILLE...PLEASANT HILL...ROSEBUD...
SUWANEE...SNELLVILLE...NORCROSS...LILBURN...LAWRENCEVILLE...
GRAYSON...DULUTH...BERKELEY LAKE...MOUNTAIN PARK...BROOKWOOD...
HIGHTOWER AND DREW. HEAVY DOWNPOURS WILL CAUSE PONDING OF WATER ON
ROADWAYS.

THESE WIND GUSTS MAY PRODUCE MINOR DAMAGE TO TREE LIMBS AND BLOW
LIGHT...UNSECURED OBJECTS AROUND.

This storm is around 45kft tall

A large area of rain and thundershowers has already entered northwest Georgia and is moving quicker than the forecast was calling for. Assuming it holds together, it should arrive here in 2-3 hours. The dew point is still around 61 degrees at DaculaWeather.com, which means there really isn't a lot of low level moisture to work with, and precipitable water values are only around 1". What may happen is that as the showers get closer to us, they may start to weaken due to the lack of moisture it has to work with. But hopefully we'll see something out of it, because we need all the rain we can get at this point.