Afternoon Showers Could Cause Flash Flooding

The possibility of localized rain showers that could deliver as much as 3 inches of rain on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon has prompted a flash flood watch to be issued for Hamilton and Wenham.

The watch was issued by the National Weather Service on Wednesday at about 12:40 p.m. It runs from 5 p.m. Wednesday through Thursday afternoon and includes eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. A watch had already been issued for much of interior New England on Tuesday. For example, on Tuesday areas of downtown Keene, N.H. were flooded when heavy rain for two hours overpowered storm drains, according to a report by the Keene Sentinel.

The culprit is a slow-moving cold front moving across the area on Wednesday afternoon, the weather service said. The front will then stall and move off the coast on Thursday afternoon.

“The ground across the region is already saturated due to heavy rainfall over the last week or so,” the weather service said. “It will not take much more rainfall to cause flash flooding; Any thunderstorms could produce one to two inches of rain in an hour or less.”