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Moisture Levels Remain High

| July 7, 2013 @ 6:56 am

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The cool and wet pattern that Central Alabama has seen for the last several days lets up a little today, but with a very moist, tropical air mass in place, we maintain shower chances through much of the upcoming week. Yesterday was an unusual day for weather in Central Alabama with afternoon highs only in the mid 70s – that’s 15 degrees below the average high of 91 for early July – and close to an all day kind of rain.

The upper closed low that was in the vicinity of St. Louis yesterday morning will gradually pull northeastward and weaken today and Monday. As the upper low moves away, it will leave tropical moisture in place as we should return to something more typical of our summer weather. While today is expected to be drier than yesterday, showers remain likely but coverage and hours of rain should be reduced. Today’s highs are expected to edge upward into the lower 80s.

For beach goers, the weather improves as we slowly return to more typical summer weather along the beautiful beaches of Alabama and Northwest Florida. I expect scattered storms today, but they will become more widely spaced as we head into Monday. Temperatures will be edging back to their usual summertime levels in the upper 80s to near 90F. Low will be in the muggy 70s.

The model forecasts show a fairly fast transition of the upper low into an open trough that moves into New England Monday afternoon. While the trough does exit quickly, it does leave behind a weakness between the Bermuda high to our east and the strong ridge to our west. This will keep us in those diurnally driven showers and thunderstorms for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But by Wednesday, I note another change beginning to take shape for the end of the week. The upper ridge over the west builds northward keeping the western US hot as a strong short wave moves out of South Central Canada into the western Great Lakes. Thursday and Friday it digs into the eastern US as a fairly sharp trough. Keep in mind that we don’t usually see cold fronts reaching into the Southeast US during the summer months, especially July and August. However, the GFS is suggesting a frontal boundary coming into the Southeast US on Friday. The ECMWF which showed something similar but slower yesterday now has a much closer resemblance to the GFS. Confidence is a bit higher than yesterday with the two solutions coming into better agreement. While I’m not prepared to stick my neck out on a completely dry forecast, we could see drier air make its way into the Southeast which would bring some welcome relief to the high humidity even if we still see isolated showers in the heat of the afternoon.

The good news for us is that this pattern keeps any potential for high heat away even though we should see afternoon highs recover into the 80s, upper 80s by Wednesday and Thursday, for the upcoming week.

Tropics are a tad more active. There are two areas being watched by the NHC, one in the western Gulf and one about 1500 miles east of the Windward Islands, however, neither of them appears likely to develop for the next couple of days. And the main severe weather threat, outside of flash flooding in the Southern Appalachians, remains along the northern tier of the US.

The GFS maintains a general trough over the eastern US through the 16th of July, but by the 22nd, a large ridge is forecast to build into the Central US bringing much hotter weather to the eastern half of the country.

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-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather

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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