PANAMA CITY — A rare storm system left much of the northwest Panhandle in soaking wet shambles; however, Bay County was relatively spared from the worst of the storm.
A slow-moving cold front stalled over coastal Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle, slowing the advancement of the torrential rainfall that inched its way through Bay County on Wednesday morning and dropping copious amounts of rain, winds that knocked out power to thousands, and even spinning off a few tornadoes in Jackson County.
“When you have these very rare heavy rains events like this, they occur on a very small scale,” said Brian Hoeth, emergency response meteorologist at the National Weather Service Southern Region headquarters in Fort Worth. “You’ll see where you get a foot to 2 feet of rain that could be dumped on two counties [in the] area, but the county surrounding them — not that it didn’t get rain, but didn’t get as much.”
As much as 2 feet of rain fell in Pensacola, but the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport saw less than a foot.
Such rain events are hard to predict because they occur on a very small scale, he said, noting the storms that hit the Panhandle region formed from a larger storm system and the heavy rain “came out of it was a smaller scale feature embedded within the larger scale storm system.”
“We can go in after the fact and figure out exactly what happened; it’s pretty difficult to explain,” Hoeth said. “But, it’s moving out right now.”
Light rain is possible over the next two days, but the area is expected to clear out by Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
Rain totals*
Apalachicola: 2.88
Bid-A-Wee: 5.18
Blue Springs (Jackson County): 4.31
Bonifay: 5.28
Dickey (Calhoun County): 3.66
Morgan (Calhoun County): 1.18
Tyndall AFB: 1.58
West Bay (ECP airport): 9.96
* 48-hour totals in inches through 7 p.m. CDT Wednesday except for Bid-A-Wee and Blue Springs (through 7 a.m.) and Bonifay (through 1 p.m.).
Source: National Weather Service Tallahassee