Rain Mounts Up

| April 18, 2009 @ 5:13 pm | 10 Replies

At 5:00 pm, Central Alabama was sitting under a solid deck of high clouds mixed in with some mid-level clouds too. All of those clouds were coming from the storms in Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana. Temperatures even with the clouds managed to make it well into the 60s with some spots that got a tad more sun reaching the lower 70s.

Radar across Central Alabama showed very little at 5 pm. The morning sounding from the Shelby County Airport showed fairly dry air above 850 millibars or roughly 5,000 feet. Quite a different picture at Jackson, MS, where their sounding was pretty moist all the way up to 500 millibars or about 18,000 feet.

Dew points across Central Alabama were in the upper 50s compared to the lower 60s in Central Mississippi. So rain will be coming our way tonight as the surface low located in the vicinity of Victoria, TX, makes its trek northeastward into western Kentucky by 1 pm Sunday.

I expect the rain to arrive in earnest after 3 am Sunday, but patches of rain or a scattered shower could occur after 9 pm this evening.

Rainfall might be heavy, too, as it sure is mounting up off to the southwest of us. Looking at the Lake Charles WSR-88D at 5 pm showed radar estimated rainfall amounts of over 6 inches in some rather large areas of Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana with numerous flash flood warnings in the Houston area.

Strong to severe storms are still possible during the day Sunday across all of Alabama, so it is prudent to stay informed on the weather. Latest forecasts indicate CAPE values somewhat higher than the morning run that the Weather Xtreme Video was prepared from, so it will be a watching situation as the details become clearer. Stay with the Blog for the latest.

-Brian-

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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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