Archive for July 29th, 2012

Need Rain?

Most of Central Alabama needs rain.

According to the State Climatologist John Christy, much of Central Alabama needs 1.5 to 2 inches of rain just for short term needs. 

Some folks were lucky this week, as this graphic shows, including areas northeast of Birmingham up through parts of Blount, Etowah and Cherokee Counties.  Folks in some of the western border counties also got some much needed rain, but as is the case through the summer, the positive rainfall amounts were widely scattered at best. In the graphic, greens, blues and purples are good.

Drier air has moved in, but ironically, the feature responsible for the front that brought the drier air may ship us a couple of thunderstorm complexes over the next four days that could help. We will be keeping our fingers crossed, and looking northwest.

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Update at Late Morning

Morning sounding from the Shelby County Airport this morning showed that drier air was settling into Central Alabama. You can see the substantial dry layer from about 800 millibars up where the red line (temperature) is separated from the green line (dew point). This support the idea that we’ll see very few showers or thunderstorms in Central and North Alabama today.

And the dry air was evident in the surface observations, too. Note in the observation around 10 am that the dew point at Birmingham was 65 while at Calera it was 74. This weak frontal boundary should continue to move southward today helping to suppress any shower development over the northern half of the state of Alabama. So it looks like most of the isolated showers should be from about Montgomery southward this afternoon.

Even though the air for us will be slightly drier, it is still going to be quite warm with highs ranging from about 94 to 97 across Central Alabama.

-Brian-

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Isolated Storms Mainly South

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Not much change to the overall weather pattern for us in Central Alabama. This morning there is a weak front distinguished primarily by a slight decrease in dew points. This was moving steadily southward and should be the focus for isolated thunderstorms. But like yesterday, the storms will be few and far between. Highs once again climbing into the mid 90s. The afternoon humidity is expected to be just a tad lower as the weak front moves further south. But the lower humidity will only last through Sunday.

Aloft we will be dealing with a continuation of the trough along the eastern US and the ridge along the Rockies. This will place us in a northwesterly flow pattern. This type of pattern can be difficult to forecast since weak disturbances traveling down the eastern side of the ridge can easily produce large clusters of thunderstorms or MCCs (Mesoscale Convective Complexes). Computer modeling, whether the GFS or ECMWF, usually do not handle this situation well. The current 06Z GFS model shows a somewhat stronger disturbance moving through the flow at mid-week, so this might be one of those situations. However, we’ll need to keep a vigilant eye throughout the coming week for development of any of these clusters even with some of the weaker disturbances.

By the end of the week it looks like a strong trough moving along the US-Canadian border will dampen the ridge and the trough pattern that could result in a the ridge migrating eastward. This could signal a change to hotter weather for us once again with highs into week 2 closing in on 100 again. This is verging on the long range forecast, so we’ll cautiously watch and hope we don’t see that kind of heat again.

Tropics are quiet. SPC outlooking only a small area for a slight risk of severe storms just west of the Great Lakes. Rainfall for the next five days will continue to be spotty with the daily isolated showers and thunderstorms. Please be wary of any lightning; there were several lightning deaths in the US last week and we don’t need any more of those statistics.

As I noted, the long range GFS suggests that the ridge will be moving back eastward which could spell another round of hot and primarily dry weather with small daily chances for thunderstorms.

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James Spann is taking the upcoming week off, so I will be posting a Weather Xtreme Video each morning typically by 8 am or so. Enjoy your day and Godspeed.

-Brian-

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