Clouds Give Way to Some Sun by PM

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The surface high pressure system has turned the wind around to the east and northeast and brought some clouds back to mainly the eastern half of Central Alabama this morning. These clouds should slowly erode and mix out this afternoon giving way to some sunshine this afternoon. As a new storm system takes shape to our west, New Years Day should be dry and coolish as we wait on the arrival of more clouds and rain for Friday and Saturday.

The upper level closed low will move out of the southern Rockies on Saturday as it opens up and ejects northeastward. The weakening upper low will still generate a good surface low in the vicinity of Kansas City on Friday and move quickly into Canada by Sunday. This will drag yet another cold front across the Southeastern US bringing another round of wet weather to Central Alabama. Rainfall amounts for the storm should again be reach the 2 to 3 inch range, so flash flooding and flooding issues may once again become a problem for us. Hopefully with the rainfall spread over two full days, there won’t be a serious flooding threat, but we’ll have to stay vigilant on this.

Severe weather does not appear to be a concern for Central Alabama with the greatest instability confined to the Gulf Coast. And once again we get chilly without extreme cold as a long wave trough is carved out of the eastern half of the country into the first half of next week. This will keep us at or slightly below 30-year average temperatures for Central Alabama without any extreme cold weather to deal with. Average highs for the first of January run about 54 while average lows run about 34.

The overall weather pattern remains pretty active with another storm system for us around the 9th and 10th followed by another fairly low latitude upper trough in the 13th to 15th time frame. The active pattern certainly suggests that we start 2015 with an over abundance of rain as we reset the rainfall counters to zero. But as we’ve been seeing over the last couple of weeks, there does not appear to be any really extreme cold for us.

I’m heading to the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game between Florida State and Oregon on Thursday, so Bill Murray will be posting a discussion here tomorrow. James Spann should be back from his vacation on Friday, so I’ll have the Weather Xtreme Videos over the weekend. I hope that you will have a Happy New Year. And Go Noles! Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather