The quiet end to January in the South will not be indicative of the upcoming weather in February as the new month will kick off with a renewed flood risk across the region.
A quiet start to the week is underway across the South, but a looming pattern change will renew the risk of heavy rain and flooding by the end of the week.
People across the central and southern tier of the nation have been no strangers to heavy rain this past month, with many locations tallying up over 200% of the historical average rainfall for January. This month, over 8 inches of rain have fallen in places like Houston, Shreveport, Louisiana, and Little Rock, Arkansas.
With a dry pattern in store for the rest of January across the South, these cities are not expected to measure additional rainfall, but as the calendar moves into February, a much more active pattern will return.
A change in the jet stream pattern is expected to unfold over the United States as February begins. “This will force a separate storm track that will focus heavy precipitation across the southern tier of the United States,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Joe Lundberg explained.