Alabama 811 | Know What's Below.

Rain, Glorious Rain

| December 30, 2007 @ 7:42 am | Reply

The latest edition of the ABC 3340 Weather Xtreme Video is available in the player below and on iTunes.

Isn’t it great to wake up to the sound of rain on the roof? I just love it. And as I was skipping out to fetch the paper getting pelted with those cold rain drops, I thought to myself, what would be happening if the temperature were about 10 degrees colder? This is actually the kind of weather pattern that can often catch develop marginally with a little too much evaporative cooling or a little too cold a layer above the ground and result in an icing situation. But like Hannibal Smith used to say on the A-Team, “I love it when a forecast comes together.” [Note: Hannibal actually said plan, not forecast, but I’ve taken a bit of editorial license to change it up.]

So the rain will gradually be ending from the west and northwest today. Places like Hamilton and Jasper and Vernon and Haleyville are already out of the rain. But I think there will be a lot of clouds hanging around for the afternoon that about all we can expect to see is a few peeks at the sun right before sunset. Temperatures will recover to the lower 50s for highs today.

Looks like that ends the rain for the year as the whole rain shield moves eastward out of the state. The SPC has outlooked an area of Southern Georgia, North Florida, and coastal sections of North and South Carolinas today where the low level wind profiles are very impressive for isolated tornadoes. That area will definitely bear watching today.

The next big event for Central Alabama will be the cold. An Arctic blast will head our way as 2007 ends and 2007 begins. Looks like New Years Day and January 2 will be quite cold. January 1 could be one of those days where the high occurs in the very early morning and then the mercury plummets all day. With good cold air advection in place but a clear sky helping contribute to near perfect radiational cooling, we should see a very cold low on Wednesday morning – something around 20 or so. So keep those winter coats handy.

But in typical Central Alabama fashion, the atmosphere should moderate pretty quickly resulting in temperature values near seasonal for early January by Friday.

Further into voodoo country, the GFS maintains a progressive pattern with another system around the 9th and 10th and a very impressive pattern that could spell severe weather around the 14th. It is much too far out to be very specific, but we’ll watch the trends and see how the model solutions change with time.

Thank you for tuning into the Weather Xtreme Video. I’ll be ending the year and starting the year filling in for Jason Simpson. And James Spann will be back tomorrow with the next Weather Xtreme Video. Have a great, wet Sunday and God bless.

-Brian-

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About the Author ()

Brian Peters is one of the television meteorologists at ABC3340 in Birmingham and a retired NWS Warning Coordination Meteorologist. He handles the weekend Weather Xtreme Videos and forecast discussion and is the Webmaster for the popular WeatherBrains podcast.

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