Tropical storm Alberto could bring a month’s worth of rain to already wet parts of the Tennessee Valley today, but TVA does not anticipate the heavy rains will push any reservoir levels to flood stage.
The wide bands of rains from the first named storm of the year will dump from 2 to 4 inches of rain over much of the Tennessee Valley today, according to forecasts by the National Weather Service. The weather service has issued flash flood warnings across most of Northern Alabama and Georgia and Southeast Tennessee today because of the additional rains forecast from Alberto. But the floods are expected to be localized and remain in flood prone, low-lying areas.
Further South, the tropical storm is bringing even bigger rains to central Alabama. Forecasters said the subtropical depression swirling near Birmingham, Ala., could dump as much as 6 inches of rain to the middle of Alabama. The U.S. Golf Association canceled a practice round of the U.S. Women’s Open Championship, being played at Shoal Creek, because of the weather and Alabama Power Co. said about 20,000 homes and businesses were without electricity Tuesday, most in the Birmingham area.
TVA is not anticipating major power outages as the storm moves north, although local distributors could face some electrical delivery problems and flash floods.
“This is a pretty significant rain event for a single storm since we usually get 4 inches of rain for the entire month (of May),” said James Everett, manager of the river forecast center at TVA. “Rainfall in the eastern half of the Tennessee Valley – everything east of Chattanooga – has already got double the normal rainfall in the past week and even after Alberto moves north we’re still looking at chances or rain every day this week.”