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Hurricane Sally Expected to Impact Athens

Hurricane Sally has weakened to a tropical storm, but the Gulf Region still faces issues from drenching floods. Sally’s presence will also make an impact in Athens. 

Pam Knox is the director of the UGA Weather Network and an Agricultural Climatologist in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. 

“The next day and a half is going to be pretty interesting for Athens. We're starting to see the bands approaching Athens now, the bands of rain, and those will increase in intensity over the day and tonight we should really get hit with the heaviest rain and so the period of tonight, Wednesday night, until tomorrow night, Thursday night, there’s going to be a time period where Athens could see 4 to 6 inches of rain."

We can also expect wind gusts up to 35 miles per hour during those thunderstorms. Sally is expected to hit closer to home than many storms. 

“By Thursday at about 7 o’clock, they're expecting the remains of Sally, which at that point should be a tropical depression, should be pretty close to right over Athens. We don’t know the exact path yet, obviously, but that is the current prediction.”

Knox says the heavy rains will cause many of the standard, but potentially dangerous, problems associated with storms. They include surface flooding, flash floods, and more. 

“It's going to be very heavy rain, it's not going to be continuous, but it’s going to be periods of really heavy thunderstorm rain with some lighter rain in-between.”

Winds gusts are also expected to topple trees, which could knock out power, block roads, and damage buildings. 

Alexia Ridley joined WUGA as Television and Radio News Anchor and Reporter in 2013. When WUGA TV concluded operations, she became the primary Reporter for WUGA Radio. Alexia came to Athens from Macon where she served as the News Director and show host for WGXA TV. She's a career journalist and Savannah native hailing from the University of Michigan. However, Alexia considers herself an honorary UGA DAWG!
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