Last week we received roughly 2.54 inches of rain at the Muscle Shoals Airport, bringing our monthly total over 3 inches for August.  This is slightly above average, helping to reduce our rainfall deficit for the year to just above 14 inches. While half an inch of rain isn’t considered a drought buster, it looks like the month of August will be a month that the drought receded, if even a bit.

Almost every day this week has a chance of rain, with the greatest on Wednesday, so hopefully we can make a bit more headway.

While today will be another hot day in the Shoals area with the high temperature reaching 100, the next few days will start a cool down with highs in the lower 90’s by the middle of next week.  This heat wave has broken many records across the Tennessee Valley.  Combined with the drought, it has made the past month’s weather almost unbearable.  A chance of showers and possibly thunderstorms will also increase over the weekend, hopefully providing at least some minimal relief from the record drought.

Even though we started off the summer with relatively cool temperatures, in both Huntsville and Muscle Shoals, records have been broken this August.

The Huntsville office of the National Weather Service issued an update on the records broken and the number of consecutive above 100 degree days we’ve had, and how they relate to past heat waves.

Latest record tempreture and heat wave information.

While it does seem that the temperature is coming down a bit, the humidity replacing it isn’t making it feel any better.

On August 17th, 2007, a severe storm affected Lauderdale county and the Underwood / Petersville area north of Florence.  A severe thunderstorm warning was issued for the storm, which started to weaken as it moved over Florence and the Tennessee River.  The damage was reported as follows:

• Power lines down on Country Road 139, 3 miles west of Zip City (see area on Google Maps)
• Wind damage 3 miles north north east of Underwood / Petersville on County Road 24 off Highway 17, including trees across road (see area on Google Maps)
• Power lines and trees blown down in Petersville around County Road 7 and 11 (see area on Google Maps)
• Trees downed and roof blown off of barn, shed damaged on County Road 510 , 4 miles north of Anderson, just south of the Tennessee state line (see area on Google Maps)

WAFF’s Brad Travis was covering the warnings online.