6/23/2023 0 Comments Hurricane opalThe southern Appalachians got drenched with more than 10 inches while the Ohio and Tennessee valleys saw 3 to 6 inches. ![]() Its main impacts transitioned to heavy rainfall. Opal dissipated to a low pressure as it dashed north through the eastern Tennessee and Ohio valleys on October 5. Opal also brought incredible wind gusts into the Southeast, with a 144-mph gust clocked at Hurlburt Field, Fla., a 79-mph gust at Pensacola Regional Airport in Florida while Mobile, Ala., had a peak gust of 66 mph. Brewtown, Ala., tallied 19.42 inches, Pensacola, Fla., got hit with 15.45 inches while Mobile, Ala., was soaked with 7.48 inches of rain. Atlanta also got soaked with 6.68 inches of rain, demolishing the city’s former all-time single day rainfall record by more than one inch.Ītlanta wasn’t the only city that took a hit with Opal. As the storm swept north, it rocked through Atlanta, producing wind gusts up to 69 mph that left 300,000 residents in the dark. Opal was still a major Category Three Hurricane when it made landfall at 5 p.m. trough helped push the storm north through the Gulf of Mexico where it moved over very warm water and grew into a major Category Four storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. The depression became a tropical storm by September 30 in the southern Gulf of Mexico. It didn’t become a tropical depression until September 27 when it rolled off the Yucatan Peninsula southeast of Cozumel, Mexico. The weak low pressure peacefully pushed across the Atlantic into the Caribbean over the next two weeks. The tropical wave that eventually became Hurricane Opal initially formed off the African coast on September 11. On October 4, 1995, monstrous Hurricane Opal did just that. On occasion, a tropical system can throw a wrench into the ATL’s rainfall distribution. July is Atlanta’s wettest month with an average of 5.27 inches of rain while October is the second driest month with only 3.41 inches. As a matter of fact, 25 years ago, a powerful hurricane swept into the Southeast and added to one city’s weather records. ![]() The peak of the Atlantic hurricane season can bring tropical storms and hurricanes that produce downpours and winds in September and early October. The Southeast is notorious for getting slammed with tropical systems in the fall.
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