Heavy rain Wednesday afternoon and night could lead to flooding in Connecticut, the National Weather Service said.

The heaviest rain is expected to fall on central and eastern parts of the state from Hartford and New Haven counties east to the Rhode Island state line. Those areas could see 2 to 3 inches of rain by early Thursday afternoon, the weather service said.

The agency has issued a flood watch for almost all of Connecticut, with the exception of Litchfield County in the northwest.

"A coastal low pressure system will bring moderate to heavy rainfall Wednesday afternoon into early Thursday morning," the weather service said.

Wednesday should otherwise see some fog in the morning, with highs reaching the 50s.

The weather service said the rain could lead to "excessive runoff," which may "result in flooding of rivers, creeks, streams and other low-lying and flood-prone locations."

"Creeks and streams may rise out of their banks. Flooding may occur in poor drainage and urban areas," the agency said in its flood watch.

The rain is expected to start during the late afternoon hours and continue into tonight. Rainy weather will stick around Thursday with highs in the 40s and low 50s. Skies should dry up by Thursday night, giving way to mostly sunny skies and highs in the upper 40s and low 50s on Friday.

More rain is expected over the weekend starting Saturday afternoon and continuing overnight and into Sunday, the weather service said.

The rainy weather during the middle of this week and forecast for the weekend come at the tail end of what's been a wet winter.

So far in March, the National Weather Service has recorded 1.43 inches of rain at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, about 0.8 inches more than normal. Between the start of December and end of February, 18.28 inches of precipitation fell, a record-setting amount going back to 1904, according to the weather service.

The deluge of rain included flooding in early January. Flooding from that rain event, which melted accumulated snow, caused authorities to order people in Norwich to evacuate, after the waters threatened a dam upriver in Bozrah.

All told, Bradley saw 7.79 inches more rain from December through February than it would during a typical year, the records show.