Fire extinguishing rain by the weekend

The ABC 57 Neighborhood Weather Team is forecasting the potential for several rounds of heavy rain for this weekend. So far for the month of April, rainfall has been a bit below average. That won’t be the case by the end of the weekend.

Everyone should see at least around two inches of rainfall by Monday, May 1st. A lot of moisture will be building in by Friday night. Once it arrives, the rain will begin. The majority of the weekend looks wet but there will be a few breaks, as individual rain bands push through Michiana. Some folks who live towards the south and west could pick up closer to three inches or more. This is not even the heaviest of the rainfall. Places across Illinois and Missouri could see well over five inches, so flooding concerns are in place.

This satellite picture was taken from Google Maps. Our team did some investigating on the size of the Elkhart landfill, specifically on the surface area it covers. This landfill covers a space of over three million square feet. We decided to look further to calculate how much water could be possible to reach any lingering smoldering or fires.  

For every inch of rainfall, two million gallons of rainwater are possible. If Elkhart picks up at least two inches of rainfall, which is highly likely, over four million gallons of rainwater could fall on the landfill. This would be a tremendous help put on any leftover fires or smoldering.  

*These numbers are rough estimates and depend highly on the exact dimensions of the landfill and the precise amount of rain that does fall.*