Forecasters: Rain, rain here to stay

Temperatures expected to rise as weakening low-pressure system stalls over region.

Forecasters are predicting more rain for Southeast Missouri until next week as the remnants of Hurricane Dennis stall and spin over the Midwest.

Hurricane Dennis has drenched much of the Mississippi, Tennessee, and Ohio valley regions, and some of the heaviest rain fell in Southeast Missouri. Area totals range from about 2 1/2 to 5 inches, according to information compiled by the National Weather Service. Showers resulting from Hurricane Dennis have dumped 3.83 inches on Cape Girardeau. Jackson got 3.69 inches from Dennis, and Perryville got 2.65 inches. Rain from the weather system began falling in Cape Girardeau late Sunday night.

Kevin Smith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Paducah, said the weather system created by Dennis could bring more rain to the area over the next seven days, mostly because the atmosphere has been saturated with moisture. Increasing temperatures in the next week could create scattered showers and thunderstorms, and by Sunday, temperatures will be in the low 90s. For much of the area, Smith said, weather forecasters are predicting about a tenth to two-tenths of an inch of rainfall every day.

"It's a more scattered weather event so someone could get nothing for one afternoon, and someone else could get a quarter of an inch in an hour," Smith said.

Smith said Hurricane Dennis now has been downgraded from a tropical depression to a meandering low pressure system. On Wednesday afternoon, it was centered over southern Indiana, but by today or Friday it should move back again closer to Southeast Missouri, centered over central Kentucky.

"It's kind of pinwheeling, or like a circulation in a pool," Smith said. "It's like a circulation in a larger pool of water that is the global atmosphere."

The weather system has stayed around so long, Smith said, because nothing has passed through the jet stream strong enough to knock it out of the area.

Flash flood watches were in effect for most of the region, but Smith said the National Weather Service is not predicting flash floods for any specific area at this time. However, he said flooding still could occur, after a sudden thunderstorm.