The Sunday edition of the ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player below, and on iTunes:

Okay, just playback my first paragraph from yesterday. We are still dealing with the brutally cold air now in place across the northwestern US that has plunged into Texas. That cold air is giving many problems to Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and on to the northeast all the way to New England. And it will be giving us some weather beginning Monday with rain.

The trough over the Four Corners area is finally beginning to show signs of moving out. As it does, it will split leaving a small low back in the Southwest US that will be reinforced once again on Wednesday when it looks like a rerun of the situation we’ve been dealing with over the last couple of days. With much of the trough staying well to our north, it will drag the cold front through Alabama on Monday but it looks like the rain will probably not clear Central Alabama completely until Tuesday morning.

Once the front passes your location on Monday, it will be turning sharply colder. Folks to the southeast of Birmingham will probably not see the colder air until Monday evening or early Tuesday. Tuesday I do not expect to see temperatures climb much. It is likely to be a situation where it’s 36 to 40 around sunrise and during the day the thermometer will change just a degree or two. And with clouds and a stiff north wind, it’s going to feel brutally cold. That will be about a 30-degree change in afternoon high temperatures from the lower 70s of this afternoon.

Cold and dry for Wednesday but then the GFS seems to get overly agressive with moisture return. The surface high moves off to the east of us on Thursday but the precip generated by the GFS seems over done for Thursday. Friday the Gulf opens along with a strong upper flow out of the Pacific so the moisture return is there. Temperatures also moderate a bit Friday but another shot of cold air on Saturday will drop temperatures back below seasonal values.

I’ve stated this a couple of times over the last several weeks, so this is old news, but the GFS is continuing to show an active weather pattern. And with a continuation of this Four Corners Storm Machine as James calls it, we have to be on our guard for a wintery set up. For the next week, there doesn’t appear to be a winter storm threat, but this active pattern could easily produce one for us. That’s one of the reasons that I think we should continue to discuss the extreme possibilities so we don’t get caught short.

I’ll be doing the 5 and 10 pm weather on ABC 3340 today, so I hope you can join us. And don’t forget the Storm Alert Tour 2007 which kicks off February 1 at 7 pm at Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa – hope to see you there. Have a great Sunday, and God bless.

-Brian-