Time-Lapse Map Shows Storm From Mexico as Heavy Rain Arrives in the US

A time-lapse video picked up a moisture-laden storm moving through Mexico on its way to the United States on Friday morning.

The post on X (formerly Twitter) from the social media account @UWCIMSS says: "Can you see the jet stream? #GOESEast enhanced Water Vapor imagery shows a long flow of mid-level moisture streaming over northern Mexico and the southern U.S. today. Plus a fabulous Low swirling over the Atlantic Ocean,"

The map in the time-lapse clip spans 10 hours on Friday morning and shows the storm's progression through Mexico and into the U.S. Meteorologists expect the storm to bring heavy rainfall across the south-central and Southeastern U.S. starting on Saturday. Moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern Pacific is moving into the area and merging with a frontal system pushing southeast.

"That'll help the moisture converge and form heavy rain, potentially," National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Prediction Center meteorologist Jennifer Tate told Newsweek. "We've got a slight risk of excessive rainfall or flash flooding for Saturday into Saturday night in particular."

Rain is expected from eastern Texas into Louisiana, Arkansas and parts of Mississippi and the Tennessee Valley.

Flood warnings are in place across that same region, although Tate said the rivers are high because of previous rainfall events.

"River forecasts are based on current conditions and rainfall forecasted to occur over the next 24 hours," the NWS office in Little Rock, Arkansas, posted with the flood warning.

Tate expects that incoming rain will total 1 to 2 inches for much of the impacted region, with locally higher amounts. Once the system moves through the south-central U.S., potentially heavy rainfall will also threaten Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina on Sunday and Monday. After that, the storm could threaten to bring snow to parts of the Northeast.

AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter previously told Newsweek that the intensifying storm system along the East Coast is the product of two storm systems merging.

"On Tuesday, those distinct disturbances merge and result in a more intense storm right along the Eastern Seaboard," he said. "It's looking less likely that this would be just a storm that passes harmlessly out to sea."

The worst of the snow is expected in the inland New England states. Given that the storm is still days away, it's possible it could fail to fully organize and may bring only spotty precipitation and light snow accumulations to states in the Ohio Valley, central and southern Appalachians and mid-Atlantic.

The storm comes several days after an atmospheric river soaked the West Coast on Sunday. That storm began to move into the inland Western states on Tuesday, bringing rain and heavy snow to Nevada, Wyoming and Utah.