Warm with Scattered Showers

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Our weather pattern has been somewhat muddled for the last several days thanks to an area of slightly lowered pressure in the upper air pattern over the Lower Mississippi River Valley. That weakness is gradually filling as the trough to our northwest moves across the Great Lakes area. This will allow for the upper ridge to build stronger over the Southeast US for the first of the upcoming week.

In the meantime, a large cluster of thunderstorms over the Mid-South area centered on about Memphis will be laying down boundaries that could become the focus for additional storms later today and tonight. Shower chances will be higher to the north of Birmingham while I only expect to see isolated storms across much of Central Alabama this afternoon. It will be important to watch the future motion of that large thunderstorm cluster in the vicinity of Memphis responsible for numerous flash flood warnings with rainfall amounts of up to 3 to 5 inches.

With the ridge building for us, isolated storms remain a possibility as temperatures climb into the lower and middle 90s by mid-week but Tuesday could be completely dry. The GFS still promises the approach of a frontal system Thursday and Friday as does the European. This could signal an uptick in shower chances as we head to the Fourth of July. But late June/early July fronts usually wash out without a good air mass change, so the frontal boundary will have the main impact of increasing shower chances and perhaps dropping temperatures a little due to increased clouds.

TROPICAL MISCHIEF: A broad area of low pressure off the coast of South Carolina continued to produce disorganized showers and thunderstorms. Environmental conditions are expected to remain favorable for development of this system while it drifts southward offshore of Georgia and northeastern Florida during the next few days. An Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft is scheduled to investigate this system this afternoon. The GFS remains somewhat flat on much development to this system while the European is a little more bullish on strengthening it.

BEACH GOERS: Fairly typical summertime weather along the beautiful white sandy beaches of Alabama and Northwest Florida. More sun than clouds and only slight chances for those afternoon showers and storms that are likely to develop along the sea breeze front. Temperatures along the immediate coast line will be in the upper 80s and flirting with 90 degrees. For sun bathers, you can expect 7-9 hours of sun each day. At last check, the water temperature at Dauphin Island was 84 degrees.

Looking into voodoo country, the GFS showed a general troughiness over the eastern portion of the US to about July 11th. After that the trend was to build an elongated east to west ridge across the southern and central sections of the country with the westerlies pushed well into Canada. This would spell some pretty good heat for a large part of the US.

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I’ll be filling in for Meaghan Thomas tonight on ABC 3340 as she fills in for the vacationing James Spann. The next Weather Xtreme Video will be posted first thing on Monday morning. Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather