Forecasters are concerned that a system in the Gulf of Mexico may strengthen into a named tropical storm before reaching Florida with torrential rain.
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00:00Joining us right now is Accuweather flood expert, meteorologist Alex Sosnowski.
00:04And you know, Alex, before we get into the interview here, I want to start with this.
00:09The rainfall forecast that we are expecting, or the rainfall that we are expecting in Florida
00:17with this tropical system, as you know, Alex, I am convinced that at the very least
00:22this is going to be a tropical storm, if not a hurricane, but even if it's a tropical rainstorm
00:27or a tropical depression, we feel very confident in this rain forecast.
00:32Eight to twelve inches of rain, and we're also looking at an Accuweather local storm,
00:37and I think we both think, Alex, that there's going to be spots that can easily pick up two feet of rain.
00:44Now, obviously, I want you to speak to how Florida and how the peninsula of Florida
00:49handles all this water so much differently than what we've seen in North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.
00:57Well, Florida has a lot of sandy soil. It's very flat, as you know.
01:01They have a lot of drainage systems down there. They have a lot of canals, a lot of freshwater lakes.
01:06Of course, they have the Everglades.
01:08The problem initially is going to be with the impermeable surfaces where you have these urban areas.
01:15So water can't get through that, so it's got to run off.
01:19And if we get two, three, potentially four inches of rain per hour at the height of this thing,
01:26you can have the best drainage system in the world. It's not going to be able to handle that.
01:30So that's the initial concern.
01:33Then as that rain works into the rivers, we do have streams and rivers there in central Florida,
01:39and they're only a few dozen feet above sea level in the middle part of the state,
01:45so they tend to run very slowly.
01:48But you will get water pushing into those eventually.
01:51You have the Imperial River, the Peace River, the Myakka, excuse me if I pronounce that wrong,
01:57the Hillsboro, even the St. Johns.
01:59And as we've seen sometimes with those rivers, when you get a lot of rain,
02:03there can be a slow-moving flooding disaster that follows in the days and even a couple of weeks later.
02:08And that's what we're worried about.
02:10And, you know, Alex, it's so different than North Carolina, where they had just the push of water,
02:15caused all the damage, and then the rain.
02:18Elevation.
02:19Yeah.
02:20Anytime you throw elevation into the mix, like that steep terrain, you get rapid runoff.
02:25You can have like a sizable river or a small stream.
02:29Anytime you throw elevation into the mix and torrential rainfall, it's a flash flooding right there.
02:37And that can happen so fast in a matter of minutes.
02:40You can go from a normally running stream to a rapidly flowing river where water is rising several feet in a matter of minutes.
02:51And there's no way you can get out of the path of that.
02:53The thing in that situation, if there's a flash flood warning in effect, you need to be out of harm's way before that is issued.
03:01All right.
03:02You are the flood expert, Alex Sosnowski.
03:03Thanks for pointing out the differences.
03:05And we're getting ready in Florida for heavy rain.
03:08Now, I do want to give you an update on our tropical outlook here really quickly here.
03:12As I mentioned, we have a lot of clarity this morning.
03:15Yesterday, we had areas of moisture.
03:18Today, we have two areas, one in the Northwest Caribbean, one in the Bay of Campeche.
03:24It's that first area in Northwest Caribbean that is moving west and that will consolidate with that area in the Bay of Campeche.
03:32And you'll notice when you look at the water vapor loop, you see a lot of dry air and we see a lot of wind shear across the northern central part of the Gulf of Mexico.
03:41Everything moving from southwest to northeast, that's wind shear.
03:45But where we don't have wind shear is down into the Bay of Campeche.
03:49And as this moves to the northeast, it's moving into a favorable environment.
03:53I think there's no doubt that this is going to become a tropical depression or a storm.
03:56But I want to keep the same scenarios.
03:58All right.
03:59If it remains disorganized, maybe it's nothing more than a tropical depression, goes across Florida Tuesday, Wednesday with heavy rain.
04:06But if it does organize, and I think it's going to, it's certainly going to be a tropical storm, if not a hurricane.
04:11Damaging wind shear could be some storm surge as well.
04:14But flooding remains the big issue.