Archive for November 3rd, 2012

Showers/Storms Push Southeast

As expected, a thin line of showers and some thunder formed over southern Tennessee and northern Mississippi around 4 p.m. and moved into Northwest Alabama this evening.

The line extends from Tishomingo MS to Tuscumbia to Athens to north of Huntsville.

The line will slowly weaken as it pushes southeast at about 15 mph. It will continue to produce some moderate rain and lightning for a couple of hours, but should fall apart before it reaches the I-20 corridor.

It remains to be seen if showers and storms will develop again tomorrow afternoon along and ahead ofthe cold front that will push through the state. If they do, they should be during the afternoon and be south of I-20.

Fall Back to Standard Time

Tonight, Daylight Savings Time will end at 2 AM  local time. We will fall back to Standard time, so make sure you set you clocks back before you go to bed tonight. This will make sure you get that extra hour of sleep that you are allotted tonight.

This means that you will have more daylight in the morning and less daylight in the evening. Sunrise time tomorrow will be at 6:10 AM. Sunset will be where you really notice the difference tomorrow, as the sun will set a 4:53 PM. The days are going to continue to get shorter as we head towards the winter solstice on December 21. We will remain on Standard Time until Sunday March 10, 2013.

Forecasted Weather Profile

We can get an idea at what we can expect over the next few days, by taking a quick look a simple meteogram. Meteograms are great for profiling weather because they will show you temperature, dew point, pressure, wind and cloud cover profiles all on one image.  This meteogram is the forecast from the 18Z NAM MOS for Birmingham. You will notice that the temperature profile will be cooler after today. The cold front off to our northwest will make its way towards us, the pressure will continue to drop until after the frontal passage as well. Winds will remain out of the west-southwest before switching out of the north tomorrow morning, which will help usher in the much cooler weather we can expect to start a new week.

This particular meteogram is from one of the drier model runs from earlier today. Even though not much rain is expected from this model run, cloud cover will certainly be in place tomorrow morning and should last for most of the day. Monday, not as many clouds will be in place, but they will return Monday night and into Tuesday.

Pressure will increase behind the front for a day or so, before it will begin to drop again with a disturbance that will work across the Southeast, bringing in additional clouds and an increased chance for some showers.

Another Sunny, Beautiful Saturday Afternoon

A look at the visible satellite image this afternoon, we see that abundant sunshine is in place over much of the Southeast. We can begin to see hints of the front that will be impacting our weather overnight. A few thin cloud lines in Arkansas are associated with the location of the front. As moisture levels ever so slowly increase this afternoon and evening, we will begin to see more and more clouds develop. Along with the increased coverage in clouds, our rain chance will come up some as well.

Mostly sunny conditions will continue until after sunset, but then clouds develop and settle in overnight and for most of your day on Sunday. With the increase cloud coverage, afternoon highs will be held down tomorrow in addition to the cooler temperatures settling in behind the front.

Summer in November

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It appears that Alabama is in for a bit of summer-like warmth today with highs across the state climbing into the lower 80s once again. That will feel nice with a good supply of sunshine, but this is likely to be our warmest weather for some time as a cold front along with an upper trough will be setting up another chill down for us.

An minor upper short wave will move through the Ohio Valley on Sunday which will bring clouds and some chance of rain to the area for Sunday. Right now it sure appears that this system will be somewhat moisture-starved which keeps the rain potential in the scattered shower category at best. But with the addition of clouds and a slightly more northwesterly flow, our high temperatures will drop back to near the 70-degree mark.

As the minor short wave moves by, another stronger shortwave will drop into the Central US behind that one and really bring some colder air into the Southeast US with lows dropping back into the 40s and highs in the 60s. And it appears that this pattern will change slowly through the coming week as we transition from a trough over the eastern US to a ridge with a warmer southwesterly flow which should bring our highs back to near 70 and lows to near 50 – a nice combination of cool mornings but mild to warm afternoons.

The southwesterly flow will also mean the potential to tap into Pacific moisture which would mean the presence of more clouds, but it seems unlikely at the moment that we would have any rain chances until late in the next weekend.

Things remain quiet with no areas of severe weather expected, and there are no areas of disturbed weather in the tropics being watched for development. This period of relatively good weather should provide the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast US with time for some recovery from the effects of Sandy.

The overall weather pattern remains fairly active into voodoo country with another weather system likely around the 14th followed by another string of relatively mild days.

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Looks like the weather will be just fine for some of my outdoor projects such as mowing up the leaves that have fallen so far. I’ve got one tree that is completely bare already while many of the other trees are keeping a solid grip on their leaves. In fact, I have several oak trees which just love to hold their leaves just about all winter. Enjoy the day and Godspeed.

-Brian-