Additional Notes on Today’s Weather

An important part of the forecast is looking at the latest data, especially the latest upper air sounding. The NWS at the Shelby County Airport launches a balloon for the 12Z observation around 6:00 am. The balloon takes about two hours, give or take a few minutes, to complete its run. So for a typical run, the data is not available until sometime after 8 am. Then it takes a little time for that data to make it throughout the system for incorporation in models and for display as you see below.

There are a couple of interesting observations to be made relative to the run this morning. I don’t have the run available to me from yesterday, so some of what I’m talking about will be coming from my recollection of the past run.

The first thing to note is the the CAPE value this morning was just over 400 joules/kg as compared to 0 on the run yesterday morning. As SPC forecasters mentioned in their latest Day 1 discussion, CAPE projections in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 joules/kg will be possible today.

I’ve also noted that the latest observation at the Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport was running at least 5 degrees warmer than the same time yesterday. Dew point values were also higher but only by a couple of degrees.

I know that I underestimated the impact of the thunderstorms that worked over the atmosphere on Thursday afternoon and evening. I do believe that the atmosphere over Central Alabama has recovered from being worked over, so we are likely to see more thunderstorms today – perhaps becoming numerous.

Also, and noted by SPC, it looks like the main threat will be damaging thunderstorm wind in the form of microbursts.

Whatever happens today, be sure to keep an eye on the weather and stay safe. And that especially goes for the lightning with these storms. Thursday there appears to have been a death and an injury from lightning, so don’t become a statistic.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather