Severe Weather a Possibility Tonight, Thursday and Friday for Parts of Alabama

Bill Murray/Scott Martin

As Cindy continues to move towards making landfall near the Louisiana/Texas border later this evening and into the early morning hours on Thursday, Central Alabama may start to have a tornado threat from the system.

For tonight through the overnight hours, the main risk area for these spin-up tornadoes will be in the southwestern parts of Central Alabama, especially for locations south of a line from Livingston to Selma to Fort Deposit. But looking at data from the 3km NAM and WRF, it appears that this severe threat might extend as far northward as Sumter and Greene Counties between 9 p.m. and midnight.

Here is the NAM-3K (left) and the HRRR (right) for midnight tonight with the 0-1 km helicity on top and the simulated radar reflectivity at the same time.

s indicates that the tornado threat might extend up into West Central Alabama tonight. This means we will really have to watch this possibility carefully.

During the day on Thursday, feeder bands will spread across Alabama, bring several rounds of showers and storms. As we get into the peak heating of the day, with a good supply of helicity in the atmosphere, more spin up tornadoes will be possible mainly for areas west of I-65.

The SPC has roughly the western half of Alabama in a marginal risk (level 1 out of 5) risk for Thursday.

Friday will be the day when we’ll have a larger threat of tornadoes due to the proximity of the center of Cindy, as it makes its curve to the northeast and move towards the northern part of the state. SPC has much of the northern parts of the state in a slight risk for severe storms, mainly north of a line from Aliceville to Warrior to Collinsville. A Marginal Risk is up for locations south of that and stretches as far south as Wedowee to Clanton to Selma to Millry.

Category: Alabama's Weather, ALL POSTS