A Late Evening Look at Alabama’s Weather (and Georgia’s)

Temperatures over eastern and northeastern Alabama and western Georgia are at or near freezing late tonight.

Precipitation is increasing over Mississippi and western Alabama as the upper-level trough approaches from the west.

As this precipitation moves into eastern Alabama after midnight, there will be a period where many locations will be at or below freezing. This will result in light freezing rain that could cause a glaze of ice on bridges and other exposed objects. Travel could become hazardous later tonight and Monday morning in the winter weather advisory, which includes Calhoun, Cherokee, Clay, Cleburne, DeKalb, Etowah, Jackson, Randolph counties until 9 a.m. CST.

There could also be some sleet.

As you can see, nearly every reporting station in Georgia all the way to Atlanta is below freezing, so any precipitation that falls is likely to be freezing rain along I-20 in Georgia in the morning. This could impact travel to the National Championship game tomorrow evening. But not so fast my friend, as Coach Lee Corso says; the GFS, the 3km NAM and HRRR all don’t predict much precipitation for western Georgia. That could be great news!!!

The new GFS is in and it is very bullish on freezing rain in areas northeast and east of Birmingham.

This is, of course, temperature dependent. It is 39F at Gadsden, but the dewpoint is 12F. This will result in significant wet bulb cooling as rain falls into the dry air that could easily drop the air temperature to near freezing. If this combination of precipitation and freezing temperatures occurs, there could be significant icing issues in those locations.

Notice that the GFS has a good bit of freezing rain into Blount and northern St. Clair Counties with even some into northern Jefferson. We will be watching that possibility.

Scott Martin will be monitoring the situation overnight and will have frequent updates. I will be back with updates starting at 6 a.m. as well.

Tags: exp02

Category: Alabama's Weather, ALL POSTS