On this date in 1994, Tropical Storm Alberto made landfall near Destin, Florida. At landfall, the storm had top winds of 65 mph and a central pressure of 995 millibars. After landfall, the storm slowed its forward motion and precipitation increased.

The wet storm moved slowly through Alabama into Georgia, stalling just south of Atlanta. Over the next few days it reversed its course and then looped back on its previous track before ultimately dissipating. During that period it dumped copious amounts of rain across Georgia.

Amounts as high as 21.1 inches in twenty four hours were observed at Americus. Macon was deluged with over ten inches. This rainfall produced record and near-record flooding along the Flint, Ocmulgee, Chattahoochee, Choctawhatchee, and Apalachicola Rivers.

Overall, flash flooding and flooding caused by the rainfall from Alberto took thirty three lives, destroyed thousands of homes (including some entire communities), forced approximately 50,000 people to be evacuated, and caused property damage (including lost crops) estimated as high as $750 million. It would be the worst natural disaster in the history of the state of Georgia. Thirty counties were declared disaster areas.

Sure looks a tropical system is brewing in the Caribbean. Here is the model output on the new system:



Needless to say, there is a bewildering array of solutions at this point. The first hurricane hunter data should be in here tomorrow afternoon, and we will have a better sample of what is going on....

NWS in Huntsville posted a Flash Flood Warning for Dekalb County until 7:45 pm after two inches of rain fell around Mentone. The thunderstorm is very small.

At 6:30, it was also raining heavily around Montgomery and SE of Montgomery into Barbour County. Movement slowly south and SE.

6 pm official temperature at Montgomery's Dannelly Field only 73 degrees in the rain-cooled air.

A few showers just developed along the Walker-Fayette County line and a few south of Tuscaloosa. Not much movement.

Web video map discussion is posting as I'm writing this. Not much to discuss over the next week as Alabama and the southeastern United States fall into a typical summer time weather pattern with diurnal showers.

I was really teased yesterday by those showers, but the dust remained in my rain gauge. I think JB said he was missed, so the two of us will have dust our gauges.

GFS has some interesting developments in about a week and a half. May not be as interesting if you live on the Florida east coast or in the Bahamas. But then, we're all pretty sure those loooong range models don't verify very well.

Stay cool and stay safe with the long Fourth of July holiday weekend.

-Brian-

On this date in 2002, Steve Fossett became the first solo balloonist to circumnavigate the globe as he landed in Australia. He took off from western Australia on June 19th, taking 14 days to complete his 22,100 mile voyage.

While the tycoon adventurer goes down in the record books as the first to complete the feat, he gave most of the credit to his team of meteorologists. Luc Trullemans and David Dehenauw of the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium were looking out days in advance, giving advice to the balloonist’s mission control team.

Fosset’s first five attempts at solo circumnavigation failed, several of them wrecked because of adverse weather conditions. A thunderstorm during his 1998 attempt collapsed his balloon and sent him crashing into the Coral Sea.

Instead of dealing with snow and thunder during his successful mission, Fossett was able to steer around bad weather by following the advice of the weathermen, using high altitude winds to his advantage.. Some of the meteorological team’s best advice steered Fossett under a line of thunderstorms over the South Pacific and around a particularly dangerous storm complex off of South Africa. Luc Trullemans is considered by most to be the world’s preeminent ballooning meteorologist.