Welcome rain Wednesday

After a long blogging absence, the weather brings me back.

We have a very unusual pattern developing over the next 36 hours -- the weather map looks more like fall or even winter than summer.

That won't be reflected so much in temperatures -- although it will be noticeably cooler Wed. under cloud cover -- but it will be reflected in un-summer like precipitation.

Usually, this time of year, our best shot at rain is from thunderstorms.

But tomorrow will see a prolonged rain event over parts of the southeast.

Here's the catch -- much like a winter storm, this is a close call for us.

SOMEBODY, is going to get well over an inch of rain over a wide area, but the cutoff is sharp from north to south.

Check out the latest run of the GFS computer model seen here.

As you can see, areas of S.C., Ga. and Alabama will see 2, maybe even 3 inches of precip from tonight through Wed. night.

BUT, as you move north through S.C., the rainfall totals diminish greatly -- Chester sees 1.25 inches, Greenville-Spartanburg .75 inches and by the time you get to Gaffney, it's down to .50 inches -- we're in the .25-.50 inch range. Nothing to sneeze at, but hardly drought-busting rain.

The latest run of the NAM model, seen here, paints a slightly rosier picture, giving us close to an inch of rain.

The folks that specialize in this forecasting with the NOAA have generated this precip forecast map.

It cheats toward the NAM's higher totals for us.

Bottom line -- we're going to see some rain tomorrow, in all likelihood. It will range anywhere from a minor .25-type event to a more significant .75- to 1 inch rain. Remember though, even if the totals are smaller, this will be more valuable precip because it will cover a large area as opposed to thunderstorms which hit some areas but miss others entirely.

For Legion fans and organizers, after Wednesday's rain, we fall back to typical widely scattered late afternoon and evening thunderstorms. Temperatures should be typical of this time of year -- nothing to severe in terms of heat.