Heavy rainfall is expected to fall throughout Chilton County Monday night into Tuesday morning with cooler temperatures arriving for part of the week.

“Showers and thunderstorms are in the forecast for Monday night and Tuesday morning,” said Meteorologist Mark Rose with the National Weather Service in Calera. “There could be some flash flooding Monday night, but nothing like the flooding that happened last week.”

Rose said a cold front would be moving into the area bringing cooler temperatures Tuesday and Wednesday.

“Temperatures in Chilton County are going to drop overnight Tuesday into Wednesday morning to around 34 degrees,” Rose said.

Daytime highs on Wednesday should reach 65 degrees with overnight lows around 44 degrees.

Thursday temperatures should reach 69 degrees with sunshine and overnight lows of 53 degrees.

With cooler temperatures forecast for the beginning of the week, Chilton Research and Extension Center Director Jim Pitts said peach farmers are keeping an eye on their peach crops.

“I don’t think the forecast this week will hurt the crops,” Pitts said. “The only thing that is a concern is if there will be a heavy frost. That could cause some scarring on the peaches and it would look like a cat clawed the exterior. I would be most concerned about the forecast if we got some frost on the peaches, but I think we will probably be OK.”

Currently, Pitts said there are size differences with the fruit due to the peaches not evenly growing.

“We are all kind of puzzled right now,” Pitts said. “We are waiting to see what will happen, but at this point we are trying to decide when to start thinning and what to take off.”

In 2013, many peach crops suffered due to a cold spring and the peaches not receiving enough warm temperatures to grow like they normally need.

Pitts said this year’s crop is similar to last year’s, but is optimistic peach farmers will not be hurt by the cool temperatures.

“We had an 80 degree day this weekend and we are going to have a cool start to the week, so right now we just don’t know if it will help us or hurt us,” Pitts said.