Storms Today, Colder Tuesday

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Parts of Alabama awoke to some showers stretching from just north of Tuscaloosa to Mt. Cheaha around daybreak. Rainfall in these showers was fairly light with reported rainfall amounts between a tenth of an inch and a quarter of an inch. A surface low well to our west over Texas and Oklahoma along with a vigorous short wave trough at 500 millibars will move rapidly to the Great Lakes area by early Monday. This will generate a large area of rain and thunderstorms currently seen in the radar images just off the coast of Louisiana.

Current model data is consistent with what we saw yesterday keeping the greatest instability generally south of the Birmingham area into the early afternoon. Storms will be fast moving, so damaging wind along with isolated tornadoes and heavy rain appear to be the greatest threats. With this fast moving system, the greatest threat appears to come between about 10 am and 6 pm.

Monday becomes a transition day as the fast moving system exits the region but the coldest air does not arrive until Tuesday. The upper level trough will dig into the Central US on Tuesday as another short wave moves through the base of the upper trough. So Tuesday will be a chilly day with lows in the middle and upper 30s and highs only in the 50s.

With a sharp upper trough in place at midweek, the chilly air will stay with us into Thanksgiving with highs only in the 50s. Typical highs for late November in Central Alabama are in the lower 60s so our highs will be about 10 degrees off of that mark. Lows are usually in the lower 40s and we’ll be seeing lows in the 30s, again about 7 to 10 degrees below usual values.

The upper air pattern becomes more zonal for us for the latter part of the week so I expect to see temperatures moderate slowly with highs by Saturday in the lower 60s. We should stay dry with just some passing clouds for the latter half of the week ahead.

Looking into week 2, the pattern continues to be active with another system around the 3rd/4th of December and another around the 8th.

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James Spann will be back with the next edition of the Weather Xtreme Video on Monday morning. Stay up with the latest weather information here as this system unfolds. Stay dry and Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather