Hurricane Sally underwent some strengthening in the hours leading up to landfall and officially came ashore near Gulf Shores, AL just before 5AM CDT as a category 2 with winds of 105 mph.

While the winds have obviously created some issues, the flooding from both storm surge and heavy rainfall has been disastrous. Many areas across Northwest Florida are continuing to get hammered with heavy rain this morning.

So far, radar estimates indicate that isolated spots have picked up close to 3 feet of rain. This swath of heavy rain will spread north today up through Alabama and into Georgia. In addition to freshwater flooding in many of these areas, tornadoes will also be possible.

The flurry of activity across the Atlantic continues. Teddy will be intensifying as it moves north-northwest. It’s likely to become a major hurricane, and potentially impact Bermuda late in the weekend or early next week.

Only one name remains on the list for the 2020 season – Wilfred. Following the formation that storm, we’ll be moving on to the Greek alphabet for the first time since 2005.

As of 8pm Sunday evening, Tropical Storm Sally was located about 200 miles ESE of the mouth of the Mississippi River. It’s a slow-moving system, and it’s going to slow down even more. Yes, wind speeds will continue to increase and Sally is likely to become a hurricane, but it is this slow forward speed that is going to create some big problems when it comes to storm surge and heavy rainfall for parts of the northern Gulf Coast. The storm should be nearing the coast late Monday night.

The track will still need some fine tuning, but along and just east of where the center comes ashore storm surge could be as high as 11 feet. The areas that especially need to be on guard for this are southeast Louisiana and coastal Mississippi.

On top of this, while water is being pushed in, they’ll be a ton of rain coming down. 8-16″ rainfall totals can be expected, but isolated amounts up to two feet will be possible. Heavy rain will then spread inland across Mississippi, Alabama, north Georgia, Tennessee, and western North Carolina.

Elsewhere in the Atlantic we have Paulette, Rene, and Tropical Depression 20. Paulette will impact Bermuda as a Category 2 storm late tonight. Rene will fizzle out. And TD 20 should become Teddy and strengthen into a major hurricane later this week. As of now, it appears it will stay out to sea.