Region spared major rain from remnants of Florence

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The remnants of Hurricane Florence dropped about an inch of rain on the Pittsburgh area through Tuesday morning.

The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh said Allegheny County got 0.98 of an inch of rain, to be exact, from Monday through 7 a.m. Tuesday — 0.89 on Monday and 0.09 through Tuesday morning, as recorded at Pittsburgh International Airport.

“The city really didn’t get that much,” weather service meteorologist Shannon Hefferan said. “To the north, Butler and Mercer counties got more, just a little under 2 inches.”

Southwestern Pennsylvania is expected to have fair weather Wednesday and Thursday with partly sunny skies and high temperatures near 80 degrees. A cooling off and some rain are in the weekend forecast, Ms. Hefferan said.

In September 2004, the remnants of Hurricane Ivan drenched the Pittsburgh region, hitting some areas particularly hard. The storm set a Pittsburgh record for singleday rainfall — 5.95 inches on Sept. 17, 2004.

Remnants of the once-powerful Category 4 hurricane Florence — now reduced to a rainy, windy mass of low pressure — were speeding toward the Northeast later Tuesday.

Preliminary statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed Florence had the fourth-highest rainfall total of any hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since 1950, with 35.94 inches at Elizabethtown, N.C. Harvey’s total of 60.58 inches last year in Texas is No. 1.