I truly believe that the storm we all just lived through will be one of the storms that will be remembered and talked about for years to come. Five, ten, fifteen years from now, many of you will be talking to others who live in the Paducah area and Western Kentucky during July 2023.
“Do you remember the great flood and the lightning storm?”
One of the most impressive feats was a new Kentucky 24-hour rainfall record set in Mesonet, Graves County, west of Mayfield. It must be certified by the state climatologist, but eventually it should be.
Above you can see large areas of heavy rain. Unfortunately, the predictions of the previous days and the night before were very well confirmed. We spent a lot of time discussing how southwesterly winds hitting a stagnant boundary would create nearly 12 hours of storms, and that's exactly what happened.
The reason for the storms and unprecedented rainfall is that the storms have an amazing supply of moisture from the Gulf. A lot of that is due to the instability in the Northern Hemisphere this year, and this is just the latest byproduct of that. Think of the image above as a production line. One storm forms, then upper air flows from northwest to southeast, blowing the storm along the southeastern boundary, and another storm forms and does the same thing. This process is repeated throughout the night and morning.
A closer look at daily rainfall totals will begin at midnight local time on July 19, 2023.
I think it's fair to put this event at the top of all historical weather events and storms in the region's history. When you think of “big things,” these are what you think of, to name a few.
Here are some of the most famous storms and events:
- Extreme heat and drought in the 1920s and early 1930s.
- The 1925 Tri-State tornado was the deadliest tornado in U.S. history.
- The historic Ohio River flood of 1937.
- Snowstorm in January 1978.
- 1982 Marion, Illinois tornado.
- December 2004 snowstorm.
- The 2009 ice storm.
- 2009 Super Derecho in Southern Illinois.
- Remnants of Hurricane Ike in 2008.
- In the spring of 2011 the river overflowed.
- 2011 Summer Heat Index (multiples of 116°F-117°F).
- The summer of 2012 was extremely dry and hot.
- 2017 Perryville, Missouri tornado.
- December 2021 tornado outbreak.
- Extreme Arctic Outbreak December 23 (-21°F wind chill).
- The March 2023 bomb cyclone produced record levels of strong sea level pressure.
Do the record floods of July 2023 make the list? perhaps. I think it should be so. But it depends on who you ask. Here's why I think this event is now talking about itself as one of the “big events” in history:
- In just one night, more than 30,000 lightning strikes occurred across our four-state area.
- Rainfall amounts from 6 to 12 inches, repeating every 100 to 200 years.
- The chance of such an event occurring in any given year is 0.5%.
- The National Weather Service in Paducah issued a first-ever flash flood emergency for the Purchase area in western Kentucky.
- The one-hour rainfall of 2.32 inches was the third-highest one-hour rainfall recorded in Paducah.
- It set a new 24-hour rainfall record for Kentucky.
Paducah also recorded its second-highest daily rainfall ever. That's very impressive, especially since it's July and the rain isn't from a tropical storm or hurricane remnant, which historically has been 6 inches or more on most days.
Worst of all, this extreme flooding hit an area still recovering from another natural disaster, the deadly EF-4 tornado that struck a similar location on December 10, 2021. Sometimes, nature plays a cruel game.
Either way, this is going to be a storm we'll be talking about for a while, whether it's because of the prolific lightning or torrential rain.
