Lots of U.F.O.s being reported across the Brazos Valley over the past couple of days. Unidentifiable Falling Objects that is.RAIN! Finally! Granted the first drops of rain came after severe, damaging winds between 60mph and 70mph Wednesday afternoon -- but for some it is the most rain that there has been since the morning hours of June 22nd.

How High Pressure Actually HELPED Rain to Fall

All summer long we've talked up how high pressure was sitting overhead keeping rain chances at bay. Not to mention the excruciating heat that has come along with it -- thanks to that summer high and the exceptional drought only intensifying each other.

The Good and the Bad From Our Recent Rainfall

Let's start with the good. Actual rain falling on yards, pastures, rivers, creeks, and ponds. Enough to put a dent in the drought? No. But enough to make folks cheer and clap together while out to eat on Wednesday evening. Here are some of the totals that were reported to us through email, Twitter and Facebook:

Now onto the bad. Wednesday's rain came in with a Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued by the National Weather Service due to winds in excess of 60 to 70mph on the leading edge of the storm. Heavy rain, thunder and dangerous cloud-to-ground lightning followed after the winds settled a bit. Many locations in Bryan and College Station brought reports of car accidents, downed power lines and fallen tree branches -- most of which had already taken a hit from the onset of the recent drought. Continuous updates on damage reports coming into the News 3 newsroom can be found here.

As For the Rest of the Forecast:

Hurricane Irene is slated to dump a lot of rain and do some damage along the Eastern Seaboard. For us here at home, she'll actually help usher in drier air to the Brazos Valley. That means rain chances are shut off once again starting on Friday and temperatures are set to heat up even more than the past couple of afternoons (hard to believe that it can get any hotter out there, right?)

The one hitch in the giddy up of the original forecast is going to account for our recent soggy grounds. The heat from this summer has been caused due to normal summer conditions and a very dry ground allowing the air temperature to heat up quicker. On that same note, the dry air we expect to move in on Friday will warm up faster than the more humid air we have had lingering overhead these past couple of months. So, with all that put together, daytime highs looked likely to soar into the 107° to 110° range. That is something we will have to reassess now that a soggy ground could cause those forecast highs to come down by a few degrees (105°-107° range -- only a slight difference) Stay tuned!