A steady, long overdue rainfall greeted the last batch of students who waited at their bus stops to return to school on Tuesday.

The precipitation that began Sunday, picked back up Labor Day afternoon through the evening and into this morning generated about 1.75 inches of rainfall, according to Tom Kines, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather.

“As far as additional rain, I feel the heaviest rain is going to stay off to our east the rest of the day,” Kines said. “We will probably pick up a half-inch more.”

The National Weather Service had issued a flood watch through the morning, though Kines said the rain was expected to move out by early afternoon.

Kines said another shower or two is possible tonight and Wednesday.

“It’s a very slow-moving system, so it’s going to take a lot to get out of here,” he said. “It’s going to take at least until Thursday until we see dry weather and some sunshine.”

Kines said temperatures are expected to stay cool today and Wednesday, though remain rather humid but below normal temperature wise.

He said once the sun comes back out on Thursday, temperatures should back to where they normally are this time of year, in the upper 70s.

Kines said we could see close to if not above 80 on Friday and the weekend as well.

Not only was the rainfall a welcome sight, but also sorely needed.

“In general, this is great news,” he said. “We couldn’t have asked for much more than what we’ve got here.”

Kines said that from what he heard, “flooding issues have been pretty minor across the area, and as long as that’s true, then just a very beneficial rain.”

We have to go all the way back to June 8-9 for the last time we picked up about 2 inches of rainfall, he said, and added that from June 23-24, we received almost an inch-and-a-half.

For the entire month of August, we picked up 2.26 inches, Kines said.

He said that in the month of September, typically we get between 4 1/2 to 5 inches of rain.

“We’re probably going to have close to 2 (inches) or maybe even above 2 (inches) from this event,” Kines said. “So within the course of a couple of days, we’ve picked up maybe 40% of what we typically get for the entire month.”