Any address, any date. Up to 9 days out you get the forecast; further out, an extended forecast.
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Is any tropical storm headed for the Gulf Coast or Georgia this week?
No: the National Hurricane Center's outlook has Tropical Storm Gonzalo near the Cabo Verde Islands and Tropical Storm Fay near the Azores, and expects no new tropical system to form in the Atlantic, Caribbean or Gulf for seven days, so nothing tropical is aimed at Columbus or the Chattahoochee Valle
Stand on a dock at Lake Eufaula on a late September morning and the tropics can feel like somebody else's problem. Right now they very nearly are. The National Hurricane Center is running advisories on two tropical storms, and neither one is in our half of the ocean. Tropical Storm Gonzalo is just east-northeast of the Cabo Verde Islands, off the coast of Africa. Tropical Storm Fay is well west-southwest of the Azores, out in the open North Atlantic.
The sentence worth repeating is the last one in this morning's outlook: the hurricane specialists in Miami do not expect any new tropical system to form in the Atlantic, the Caribbean or the Gulf over the next seven days. That is a full week with nothing on the board anywhere between here and Africa, which is not something the Hurricane Center gets to write very often in September.
For people in Columbus, Phenix City, Auburn and Opelika, a tropical story is almost never a wind story. We are far enough inland that storm surge belongs to the coast. What reaches Hamilton, Manchester, Talbotton, Cuthbert and Lumpkin from a Gulf system is water falling out of the sky, sometimes for a day and a night, running off the red clay and into the creeks and then into the Chattahoochee.
Those creeks and rivers are sitting in ordinary shape. Over the seven days through Thursday, the Chattahoochee River in Columbus at the 14th Street gauge averaged about 3,484 cubic feet per second against a normal of 2,856 for these same dates, which works out to 122 percent of normal and still squarely inside the usual range. The Chattahoochee River at West Point averaged 3,349 against a normal of 3,037. Below Lake Eufaula, near Columbia, Alabama, the river averaged 4,146 where 4,750 is typical. Upatoi Creek near Columbus, which has no dam upstream to smooth it out, averaged 115 against a normal of 147. Week-long averages are the honest way to read these gauges, because the dams release water in pulses to make electricity and a single reading can swing wildly inside one day. Every one of those four is about where it should be for late September. If a tropical rainmaker did come north later this fall, it would arrive on top of a normal river rather than a full one.
Hurricane season does not end until November 30, so this is a pause rather than a finish line. The bigger signal for this area is in the Pacific, where a strong El Nino is running at an index of 1.8. In the record, that pattern strengthens the subtropical jet stream straight across the southern United States, which has usually meant a wetter and often cooler cold season along the Gulf South, more storm systems crossing the region, and a raised risk of severe weather in the Gulf states. The Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of a wetter than normal October through December here at 40 percent, with January through March leaning close to normal.
So take the week. Then, sometime between now and Thanksgiving, the thing to keep an eye on is not the far Atlantic near the Azores. It is the Gulf, where a storm that means rain from Tuskegee to Eufaula can come together in a couple of days.
| Day | High | Low | Rain | Conditions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TODAY | 85° | 59° | 1% | Patchy Fog then Sunny |
| SUN | 86° | 56° | 0% | Sunny |
| MON | 88° | 57° | 0% | Sunny |
| TUE | 91° | 61° | 0% | Sunny |
| WED | 92° | 68° | 4% | Sunny |
| THU | 92° | 70° | 19% | Sunny then Slight Chance Rain Showers |
| FRI | 90° | 71° | 38% | Chance Rain Showers |
Written by the CNAW 2 weather desk from CNAW 2 weather desk data. Last updated September 26, 2026 at 9:55 AM Eastern. Covering Columbus and Phenix City, Auburn–Opelika, LaGrange, Eufaula and the rest of the 19-county CNAW viewing area.
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