Valentine’s weekend in the South will be wet, with heavy rain and possible severe thunderstorms, but the threat of widespread severe weather and flash flooding is low.
Valentine’s weekend will be a soaker across the South, with locally heavy rain and a few severe thunderstorms possible from Texas to Florida to the Carolinas and Virginia.
While this wet weekend forecast sounds like a bummer, there are several «saving graces:»
1. It won’t rain the entire weekend in any one area of the South.
2. There’s no bitter cold air in place, so this isn’t another southern winter storm the likes of the recent ice storm («Fern») nor the Carolinas clobbering («Gianna»).
3. This does not appear to be a significant severe weather outbreak, nor a major flash flood threat.
4. In fact, for much of the region, this rain is sorely needed.
When Will It Rain?
The system is bringing rain to the Southwest and portions of the Southern Plains along with high-elevation snow to the southern Rockies.
The maps below show the timing of the rain through Sunday.
In general, rain will spread into the Mississippi Valley Saturday, then into the Southeast Sunday, then should be off the East Coast by Monday.
Severe Threat
In general, we expect the severe weather threat with this system to be rather low and isolated.
— Saturday — Saturday night: The area shown below has at least a chance of a few severe storms Saturday and Saturday night. The best chance of severe weather, including damaging wind gusts and a few tornadoes, is from east Texas to east Louisiana and western Mississippi. The worst weather will begin in east Texas by late afternoon and will move eastward through Saturday night, likely reaching Mississippi and southeast Louisiana by the middle of the night. Storms will then weaken through sunrise early Sunday.