Delta in the Delta

The 6th tropical system to bring moisture to Arkansas this year arrives Friday. Once again, the track is everything to this forecast. At this time, the Delta COULD receive heavy rainfall.

Delta will do what most tropical systems do in October. Once it makes it into the higher latitudes, it will shoot east-northeast. However, it may get close enough to bring rainfall, especially over the southeastern 1/2 of the state Friday and Saturday. Models have had a bad habit of showing these systems moving more west, then when all is said and done, they go east. If that's the case, the impacts would not be that high over Arkansas. However, I can't ignore the models. They insist on rain and some of it heavy over eastern Arkansas with a VERY sharp rainfall gradient to the west. This simply means the amount of rain will change tremendously over a short distance. That's why the track is so important. An adjustment 40 miles eastward means a particular location may receive only .2'' instead of 3''. The opposite is true if it goes west.

The track as of Wednesday evening.

The official track is along that red line. However, the cone of uncertainty means it could track as far west as Little Rock and as far east as northern Alabama.

THE FOLLOWING ARE MODELS AND NOT FORECASTS.

The NAM is furthest west with the heavy rainfall with an extremely pronounced gradient over western Arkansas.

Again, it's only a model, but look what it's saying. The gradient is real! From almost 4'' to .1'' across the span of 60 miles.

The GFS

The Euro

The following is the forecast from the Weather Prediction Center. Once again, this is a low confidence forecast since the track can and will change.