Thread: Weather question

I'm planning a trip to the pier with my dad and brother this coming weekend. I was looking at the weather forecast and saw an awful lot of thunder showers on the 10-day. When you see a forecasted day with 90% chance listed, does that often mean you guys see rain all day, or is it usually just short storms?
Just trying to determine whether I need to be looking at an alternate weekend, or if this type of forecast is just the normal short spurts of rain everyday like I'm used to seeing in the summer.

thanks for the advice!

Find a radar link and watch the loops.
Typically our spring rain events (especially along the immediate coast) are short lived.
But when a front stalls (as the current situation) rain can persist intermittently for hours.
The 'silver lining' of this is often the rain is gentle with neither lightning nor much wind and decent fishing can be accomplished with just good rain gear and an eye on the weather.

A 90% chance of rain is rare.
That means 90% of the forecast area should experience rain in the course of the forecast period.
Rain at the pier is usually NOT an all day occurrence.

Hope this helps!

Or if I'm there it means a washout with 6' seas, MUDDY water and a consistent hardhead catfish bite.

Here's the "official" definition...
FAQ - What is the Meaning of

What does this "40 percent" mean? ...will it rain 40 percent of of the time? ...will it rain over 40 percent of the area?The "Probability of Precipitation" (PoP) describes the chance of precipitation occurring at any point you select in the area.
How do forecasters arrive at this value?
Mathematically, PoP is defined as follows:

PoP = C x A where "C" = the confidence that precipitation will occur somewhere in the forecast area, and where "A" = the percent of the area that will receive measureable precipitation, if it occurs at all.

So... in the case of the forecast above, if the forecaster knows precipitation is sure to occur ( confidence is 100% ), he/she is expressing how much of the area will receive measurable rain. ( PoP = "C" x "A" or "1" times ".4" which equals .4 or 40%.)
But, most of the time, the forecaster is expressing a combination of degree of confidence and areal coverage. If the forecaster is only 50% sure that precipitation will occur, and expects that, if it does occur, it will produce measurable rain over about 80 percent of the area, the PoP (chance of rain) is 40%. ( PoP = .5 x .8 which equals .4 or 40%. )
In either event, the correct way to interpret the forecast is: there is a 40 percent chance that rain will occur at any given point in the area.

Fair enough on the forecast definition - so chances are strong of seeing some wet stuff in the sky.

I guess I'm recalling stories of last year about heavy rains driving down the salinity and causing the fish to move offshore after Mobile Bay dumped a bunch of freshwater into the gulf, and it made me worry that the bite was going to go south (literally and figuratively) by this weekend.

I have a little bit of schedule flexibility with my plans, so I'm trying to determine whether to fish Friday-Sunday, Saturday-Monday, or wait until the following weekend due to a prediction of poor fishing conditions.

Thanks for all your local insights. 8 hours of driving and having little free time makes me value this opportunity highly!

Surely it won't be as bad as last year's flood. It started storming on April 28th at about 4pm and rained heavy for 12 hours. To the tune of about 20" of rain. Lots of homes, businesses, condo parking lots and roads got flooded. The pier parking lot had about a dozen parking spaces that weren't under water. The ranger came and opened the gate though the pier house didn't open that day. The roads were so flooded it took me an hour to get to J&M and back from the pier to get shrimp. I did get a nice slot red that was hooked on my rod while I was on a shrimp run and a few good size flounder later that afternoon. I wouldn't make the trip if Kings or Spanish were my only reason for coming.

Maybe not AS BAD, but significant enough to likely have some sort of impact.
'Ground zero' appears to be south Mobile County this time with some areas exceeding a foot of rain...

We got about a foot in Springhill in the last 36 hours.

When would you normally expect to see the impact of the heavy rain? Im getting confused when I read about the epic Spanish Mack bite but look at the upcoming weather forecast.

You guys think that means the big flood of fresh water from the bays just hasn't made it along the beach yet (still coming), or that it doesn't seem to be hurting us this time?