Mild Weather Sets In

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What a difference a day can make! Yesterday we were shaping up with a pretty big storm system for Thursday with both long range models in reasonably good agreement on the solutions, but today, all of that has changed. So forecast confidence has taken a nosedive. But whether or not there is any confidence in the model solutions, a forecast still has to be made.

Temperatures overnight went into stabilization with a flat line in values from about 4 pm yesterday through sunrise this morning. And clouds have remained in place across much of the Southeast US as we continue to see the upper trough just to our west. However, as that upper trough swings across the area, we may see a few sprinkles and we should see some breaks in the clouds this afternoon with some sunshine. Temperatures will climb to the lower 50s, about typical for early January.

After today, the warmup should begin in earnest as a deep upper closed low moseys across northern Mexico keeping us in a strong warm southwesterly flow. A surface low is likely to develop over South Texas on Wednesday with a warm front projected to move northward across the Alabama. At this point, my confidence in the forecast is pretty good, but it goes completely out the window from here forward in time as the primary models seem to lose all credibility. While both suggest a strong low coming out of northern Mexico, the associated surface low and the strength of that low don’t seem to mesh with the strength of the upper trough! This is in sharp contrast to the good agreement we saw in the models yesterday.

The suggestion is that the surface low will not be very strong and will move quickly northeastward from Texas to the eastern Great Lakes. While the speed of movement looks fine, the surface low never achieves much intensity which does not seem to agree with the intensity of the upper low/trough. It’s almost like both models don’t know what to do with the surface pattern. So from here out, my confidence in the solution drops to nearly zero!

The weather system in the Wednesday/Thursday time frame should bring a significant rainfall event to the Lower Mississippi River Valley with rainfall amounts through Thursday reaching 2 to 4 inches over Louisiana, East Texas, and parts of Arkansas and Mississippi. As to severe weather potential, who knows at this point?

If the upper air solutions are correct, then another upper low drops into the Southwest US and begins coming out by next Sunday. So assuming the upper air pattern is reasonably correct, the mild weather should be with us for the upper coming week through the first of next week.

The GFS still maintains a colder look to the overall pattern with a rain event around the 16th/17th and the 19th/20th. If the GFS is correct, the upper air pattern will shift to a long wave trough over the eastern half of the country returning us to winter-like conditions.

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James Spann should be up next with the Monday morning edition of the Weather Xtreme Video. In the meantime, I think I’m going to soak my head so it won’t explode after the models have worked me over this morning. I hope your Sunday is a good one and Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather