Alabama 811 | Know What's Below.

Summer-like Weekend

| August 15, 2015 @ 7:54 am

Nice to see temperatures down a little since we know that August in the Southeast US can be unrelentingly hot. Anniston only reached 88 for the high yesterday with 91 in Birmingham, 90 at the Shelby County Airport, and 95 at Tuscaloosa. We’re starting out the day with some clouds and actually a few small showers showing up on the radar across the northern third of Alabama. Morning temperature values were mainly in the lower 70s, but dew points were still high with reporting stations mainly around 70 making it a bit muggy.

The weather pattern continued to present with a trough over the eastern US and the heat ridge along the eastern slope of the Rockies. This translated to some heat advisories and red flag warnings for the North Central US with extreme heat warnings for the Southwest US.

For the Southeast US, a small chance of showers will exist for the weekend, both today and Sunday. Rain chances are expected to go up as we start next week. A strong short wave moving across the northern tier of the US will be accompanied by a surface low with a cold front trailing southwestward into the Lower Mississippi Valley. This should lead to better coverage of showers for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

The trough moves on by us Thursday and Friday, but another short wave begins to enter the northwest corner of the US Thursday and Friday. This will keep the Southeast US in a weak ridge pattern. Since the front will not be blasting through the area, we can expect to keep some mention of showers in the forecast all the way to next weekend.

BEACH WEATHER: Beachgoers can expect 6 to 9 hours of sunshine daily on the Gulf Coast from Dauphin Island eastward to Panama City Beach with the risk of a passing storm from time to time. Highs will stay in the upper 80s on the coast with lower 90s expected slightly inland. Sea water temperature remained mostly in the mid 80s and much of the Gulf of Mexico remained fairly warm as the graphic shows.

gulfmex.fc

Looking out into voodoo country, the GFS continued to be on the unsettled side with a fairly strong short wave around the 25th and 26th of August followed fairly closely by another substantial trough around the 30th. This pattern does not favor dry weather, but at least there were no impending signs of any king of extreme heat in our future.

I expect to post the next Weather Xtreme Video here on Sunday morning. Enjoy the day and Godspeed.

-Brian-

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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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