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A Quick Update On Our Weather Situation At 10:15 AM

| February 24, 2018 @ 10:18 am

RADAR CHECK AT 10:15 AM

For much of Central Alabama at this time, we have a mix of sun and clouds throughout much of the area, with a little clearing in the east and southeastern parts of the area. There is a broken line of light showers that is over Livingston and Demopolis up to Tuscaloosa and Brookwood to Sumiton and Nectar. The individual showers are moving to the north-northeast while the line as a whole is nearly stationary.

We shouldn’t have any issues throughout the day today, but the main focus will be on late tonight and through the overnight and sunrise on Sunday. Here is the latest…


THREAT AREAS

The Storm Prediction Center has defined a Slight Risk for severe storms west of a line from Geiger (Sumter County) to Cordova (Walker County) to Cullman (Cullman County). A Marginal Risk for severe storms extends east from that line to Linden (Marengo County) to Columbiana (Shelby County) to Cedar Bluff (Cherokee County).


TIMING
The prime opportunity for strong to severe storms will enter into the northwestern parts of Central Alabama starting around midnight. The threat should come to an end around 6:00 AM, as by that time the line will have weakened due to a more stable airmass.


THREATS
In the slight risk areas, damaging straight line wind gusts up to 60 MPH and an isolated tornado or two will be possible. In the Marginal Risk area, those threats exist but will be less likely.


LATEST MODEL DATA

NAM3k Significant Tornado Parameter valid at 12AM Sunday.

Looking at the severe parameters for the event later tonight, this mainly looks more of a strong wind event with a very low end tornado threat. The good news is that the latest NAM solution is keeping the updraft helicity north and west of the state, while the significant tornado parameter stays well below 1.0 throughout the event. Surface-based instability will be rather low as well, only making it in the 250-450 J/kg range when entering the area, and dropping throughout the morning. There will be a good amount of helicity along the main line of storms, and this is where the very small threat for a brief spin up tornado will come from. Bulk shear values are also high enough to support the longevity of these storms, so they will persist for a good while.


THOUGHTS ON TOMORROW
The good news is that these storms will be on a weakening trend as the airmass over Central Alabama will be more stable. The severe threats will continue to fade as the storms move farther into the area. There may be a small resurgence in strength of the storms later during the day on Sunday as the front stalls and actually begins to move slowly northward as a warm front, but we’ll have to see how much the atmosphere gets worked over before we can be certain on that.


Stay informed with the AlabamaWx Weather Blog throughout the day, as we’ll have updates every few hours until tonight when we’ll go hourly.

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About the Author ()

Scott Martin is an operational meteorologist, professional graphic artist, musician, husband, and father. Not only is Scott a member of the National Weather Association, but he is also the Central Alabama Chapter of the NWA president. Scott is also the co-founder of Racecast Weather, which provides forecasts for many racing series across the USA. He also supplies forecasts for the BassMaster Elite Series events including the BassMaster Classic.

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