It was a wet October throughout the Tennessee Valley, but a forecaster in the National Weather Service Office in Huntsville, said it was far below the record set nearly 35 years ago.

Meteorologist Dave Nabler said weather service employees were closely watching a line of thunderstorms moving in from the west Friday night while much of the area remained under a tornado watch.

“Unless it rains about 5 inches tonight, October will not be a record,” said Nabler.

The Huntsville area has received 7 inches of rain since Oct. 1. Nabler said the record is 12.06 inches, which fell in October 1975.

“But it’s still been a wet October with rainfall about 3 1/2 inches above normal,” said Nabler.

Nabler said that most of the threat for tornadoes or strong, damaging winds existed Friday night below the Tennessee River.

“Behind the line it’s expected to turn cooler, but it shouldn’t drop much below 50 degrees,” said Nabler. “The severe threat will diminish behind the line and the rain should be over by mid-morning and clouds break up by mid-afternoon.”

Nabler said temperatures today would “struggle to get out of 50s.”

While residents in some Western and Plains states were digging out Friday after an early blast of snow, heavy rain and strong winds that toppled trees, power lines and church steeples lashed parts of the South, leaving one person dead.

The rain let up Friday, but the National Weather Service cautioned that the ground was so saturated that even a modest amount of additional rain could cause flash flooding from the western Gulf Coast to the mid-Mississippi Valley.

Heavy rain across Arkansas also stranded an unknown number of people in their homes, while strong winds damaged buildings and knocked over trees and utility lines.

In Pine Bluff, part of the roof of a Walmart store blew off during storms Thursday night. Among the damage at the First Assembly of God Church, the steeple was bent over by the strong winds.

“The steeple almost looked like a witch’s hat,” Pine Bluff police spokesman Lt. Bob Rawlinson said.