CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The start of the long holiday weekend in West Virginia will be a wet one.
Forecasters with the National Weather Service in Charleston predict a storm system with deep-layered moisture will move into the state by Thursday morning and bring with it the potential for heavy downpours and flash flooding.
A flash flood watch from the NWS for most of West Virginia went into effect Wednesday afternoon and is scheduled to continue until noon Thursday.
“We’ve obviously had a wet June, specifically down here in the Charleston area,” said Meteorologist Greg Guillot. “We are just about double our normal amount of rain for the month of June. We’re awfully saturated.”
The saturation means it won’t take much to cause a flood. The system coming into the state for Wednesday afternoon and Thursday doesn’t have a lot of flooding rain, but on top of the moisture already on the ground Guillot said problems could arise.
“It’s not going to take a whole lot to flood streams and small creeks,” he said.
The concentrated rainfall appears headed for counties in southeastern Ohio and eastern Kentucky. However, Guillot said some of that could push into the western counties of West Virginia and create the potential for floods. The biggest threat to West Virginia will be the potential for storms to “train” one after the other.
“While the potential is certainly there for any one thunderstorm or heavy shower to drop a bunch of rain in one shot, it’s going to be the threat of repetitive cells and training over the same area which is going to prompt a flash flood watch in an area,” Guillot said.
The continued wet weather pattern we’ve been in for weeks is expected to shift by Sunday night or Monday and bring a drying trend to the region.