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Flash flooding will be possible today in the Pittsburgh area

Flash flooding will be possible today in the Pittsburgh area

CBS News3 days ago
Flash flooding will be possible today for parts of the Pittsburgh area.
Any Alert Days Ahead? Today Will Be a First Alert Weather Day beginning at Noon due to flash flooding risk. No other days reach into the possible range just yet but plenty more rainy days are incoming with high humidity levels. This is just a fancy way of saying that I do believe we will see more flash flood weather days over the next week.
Aware: Yesterday's high of 90° was the 6th 90 degree day of the year.
Today is going to be a First Alert Weather Day beginning at noon due to a flash flood risk. There is ample moisture to work with, and a cold front kicking through and stalling will bring storm chances our way. Since the front is expected to align west to east, multiple fast-moving storms are expected to continue to flow over the same areas, raising the potential for flash flooding. Model data indicates ranges from anywhere from half an inch to more than an inch and a half. When talking about flash flooding, I have always bumped up the top model numbers by 150%. This means that some isolated spots could see upwards of 2.5"-3" of rain. This means low-lying areas, especially, may be impacted by quickly rising water. Flash flooding is always a tough event to forecast because it is so limited in scope, but it has such a high impact on those it does actually impact.
KDKA Weather Center
The highest rain chance will come from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. I do expect to see rain falling outside this window, but flash flooding and severe weather chances will be highest during this time. On top of flash flooding, we also have the chance for windstorms to fly through. Severe thunderstorms will be possible due to these fast-moving storms with wind speeds potentially topping 58mph this afternoon. It appears the tornado threat will be low today, but I want to just add that we can't completely rule out tornado chances.
Looking ahead, I have rain chances in place on six of the next seven days. Sunday does stick out as another day where a First Alert may be needed. Humidity levels will be on the high side, so that means downpours will continue to be possible on any day.
Let's quickly get to your forecast, with highs today hitting the upper 80s. Highs will come down to the mid to low 80s on both Tuesday and Wednesday.
KDKA Weather Center
Each day will see morning lows up near 70°. Highs for the rest of the week will be in the mid to upper 80s.
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Back-to-back floods in New Mexico and Texas with very different outcomes
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Back-to-back floods in New Mexico and Texas with very different outcomes

Eddie Gutierrez looked out the window of his brewery as the river turned into a raging torrent and swept away his neighbour's house. Three people, including two children, were killed in Tuesday afternoon's floods in Ruidoso, New Mexico, and numerous properties were destroyed. But the village was prepared, Mr Gutierrez said, with flood experts already on the ground and plans in place. By next morning the sun was shining, and the town was "almost business as usual". "It's a hard thing to see that and then the next day is almost completely normal, it's almost as if it didn't happen," he told the BBC. The neighbouring state of Texas also experienced a major flood just a few days earlier, but with a very different outcome. The ferocity of the inundation in Texas caught forecasters and state officials by surprise, killing at least 119 people. In Ruidoso on Tuesday, up to 3.5in (8.8cm) of rain fell, sending water hurtling down the surrounding mountainside and swelling the river to a record high above 20ft, before a swathe of the village was flooded. The area surrounding Ruidoso was already vulnerable to flooding because of wildfires that hit New Mexico last summer. Two people were killed and hundreds of homes were destroyed as the South Fork and Salt fires swept through Ruidoso in June 2024. Residents were forced to evacuate as the conflagrations burned 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of land on either side of the village. Days later, residents faced the one-two punch of devastating flooding. Homes surrounding Mr Gutierrez's brewery were among properties still vacant after those wildfires last year. The house that he saw floating down the river on Tuesday afternoon was one of many that had been left empty after the wildfires. Local officials are well aware that "burn scars" - areas of vegetation that no long absorb rainfall - are likely to cause more flooding in an area for years after fires. The National Weather Service (NWS) said two "burn scars" around Ruidoso would make the charred soil left behind from the wildfires "as water-repellent as a pavement". Tuesday's flooding was more of that side effect. "These floods were expected, we knew they would come and they did," Mr Gutierrez said. When a community is familiar with weather risks, they adapt, notes Upmanu Lall, director of the Water Institute at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. "The way human nature works, is that if they've experienced a event recently that informs the response," he told the BBC. "If your experience is you got hit with a flood, you probably will evacuate, if you keep getting warnings and nothing happens, you're unlikely to evacuate." One state over, in Texas, the flooding caught many unawares. One reason was the sheer, staggering volume of rainfall - an estimated 100bn gallons, surpassing the daily flow over Niagara Falls. The catastrophe unfolded before daybreak last Friday as the Guadalupe River rose 26ft (8m) in the span of just 45 minutes while young children and staff at summer camps were asleep as weather alerts were being sent. Search crews in Texas are still sifting through debris for scores of missing people. Experts have said there were a number of factors that led to the tragic floods in Texas, including the pre-dawn timing, the location of some homes and the extreme weather. Questions have been raised about whether authorities provided adequate flood warnings before the disaster, and why people were not evacuated earlier. "We didn't even have a warning," Joe Herring, the mayor of badly hit Kerrville, Texas, told CNN. At least three dead in New Mexico flash flooding At least 104 dead and dozens missing in Texas floods as more rain looms 'Hero' dad, twin girls and riverside campers among Texas flood victims

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