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A Quick Look At Our Weather Situation At 3:10 PM

| February 24, 2018 @ 3:16 pm

RADAR CHECK AT 3:10 PM

Much of the area at this point is rain free, but there are a few scattered showers out there mainly west of I-65. There may be a few areas of thunderstorm development as we have a relatively warm and unstable air mass over the area. The good news is that there is very little forcing close by, so much of Central Alabama will remain relatively dry until late tonight when the main line of storms move through. Temperatures at this point are in the lower 70s to the lower 80s, with Birmingham currently sitting at 73 degrees. That may drop a little within the next few minutes as another batch of showers is about to move over the city. Here is the latest…


THREAT AREAS

The SPC has modified the risk areas just a little from the earlier update… The Storm Prediction Center has defined a Slight Risk for severe storms west of a line from Memphis (Pickens County) to Dora (Walker County) to Cullman (Cullman County). A Marginal Risk for severe storms extends east from that line to Cuba (Sumter County) to Birmingham (Jefferson County) to Gadsden Bluff (Etowah County).


TIMING
This is unchanged from the earlier update… 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 across the area.


THREATS
This is unchanged from the earlier update… 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

Latest NAM Significant Tornado Parameter at 12 AM 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 to 150-400 J/kg just ahead of the front 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. The SPC is picking up on that probability and has a Marginal Risk for severe storms for areas mainly south of I-59 and I-20/59, with the exception of the southeastern portion of the area.


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.


Category: Alabama's Weather, ALL POSTS

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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