A storm will hit the South during Saturday night and much of the mid-Atlantic and southern New England on Sunday bringing a dose of drenching rain, minor flooding and travel delays.
Those taking to the roadways should expect poor visibility from the driving rain and be wary of water collecting on portions of the highway that drain poorly.
The rain will be heavy enough to cause flash, urban and small stream flooding. However, fast movement of the storm system will prevent widespread and major flooding of larger streams and rivers. A general 1 to 2 inches, with locally 3 inches of rain is forecast and should be handled with few problems on the major rivers.
Downpours, fog and low cloud ceilings can lead to flight delays.
The storm was already spreading rain across the Gulf Coast on Saturday morning. It was a wet drive along the I-10 corridor from much of Louisiana to Mississippi and Alabama.
Atlanta can expect rain on Saturday afternoon through Saturday night, but improving travel conditions on Sunday.
The storm will hit the South during Saturday night and much of the mid-Atlantic and southern New England on Sunday
Farther northeast along the I-85 corridor, rain will soak the Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., areas on Saturday night into Sunday morning. Expect a miserable drive Saturday night along I-77 with rain, but also fog over the high ground.
The rain will reach Richmond and Roanoke, Virginia, late on Saturday night.
In the I-95 swath from Jacksonville, Florida to Savannah, Georgia, along the coasts of South and North Carolina, to southeastern Virginia, thunderstorms will also affect some locations with strong, gusty winds and blinding downpours
A couple of the strongest storms can produce a short-lived tornado.
On Sunday, rain and thunderstorms will push southeastward across the Florida Peninsula, while clearing sweeps from west to east across the interior South.
Farther north along I-95 from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia and New York City on Sunday, rain will spread northward. A breeze will cause the rain to be windswept at times, further reducing the visibility and adding misery to those attending NFL games.
The rain will reach across southern New England on Sunday afternoon and evening from Hartford, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, to Boston.
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Physicist Franco Bocci has put forth new ideas in the long-running question of how best to keep dry when moving in the rain.
If you run, you are out in the rain for less time, yet you run into more drops – so what is the optimal speed?
Franco Bocci, reporting in the European Journal of Physics, now asserts that both wind direction and a person’s stature figure into the answer.
In most cases, the general answer is to run as fast as possible; but the answer changes in a tailwind, or for the thin.
Prof. Franco Bocci is by no means the first person to address the problem, which is far more mathematically complex than it seems on the surface.
Physicist Franco Bocci has put forth new ideas in the long-running question of how best to keep dry when moving in the rain
In the 1970s, a number of papers came out in mathematics magazines debating the question, each more fully exploring the issues at hand.
The battleground for this bit of hobby mathematics now seems to be the UK’s Institute of Physics publication the European Journal of Physics.
In 1987, another Italian researcher asserted in the journal that changing strategies did not make a substantial difference.
In 2011, a textile expert and a physicist used the same publication to suggest that an optimal speed existed, depending on the wind direction.
“For the most part in the previous work, there was a simple answer, but I found that the problem is much more complicated,” said Prof. Franco Bocci.
What complicates the question is the human shape; for simplicity, previous attempts to crack the thorny problem assumed people to be thin sheets or upright, rectangular boxes.
When Prof. Franco Bocci considered a more general case – likely to be the case you would face in the rain – he found that the answer may depend on an individual’s height-to-breadth ratio as well as wind direction and raindrop size.
Luckily there are a few generalizations in the analysis, to spare you having to calculate the cosine of the angle between your path and the wind direction.
“Let’s say that in general, the best thing is to run, as fast as you can – not always, but in general,” said Prof. Franco Bocci.
“If you’re really thin, it’s more probable that there will be an optimal speed. Otherwise, it’s better to run fast.”
As for wind direction – and again, in general – you should run as fast as you can unless the wind is behind you, in which case the optimal speed will be exactly the speed of the wind.
Prof. Franco Bocci said that the problem promises to get even more complicated as more factors are taken into account, but that for now he is drying his hands of the question.
