Slowly Digging Out Of The Deep Freeze

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BONE CHILLING MORNING: It is almost painful looking at some of our Skywatcher reports this morning. John Talbot in the Concord/Hueytown area reports 8 degrees; the coldest I have seen so far comes from Vic Bell up in the community of Scrougeout in Etowah County with 7. J.B. will crank out a list of frigid lows a little later this morning. Looks like this is our coldest start to a calendar year since the 1940s… we will crunch some numbers later and let you know where all of this stands in the record books.

We do note Miami has dropped to 36 this morning, breaking the cold daily record low for January 11 set in 1927.

LATER TODAY: Both the GFS and the NAM are printing 42 degrees for Birmingham later today. We all know they have shown a warm bias in recent weeks, but no doubt we go above freezing, and there is a chance we will break the 40 degree mark this afternoon with a good supply of sunshine. Birmingham’s official high yesterday was 35, do we did ease above freezing for a couple of hours yesterday. But, for some of the colder pockets across North Alabama, today will be the first day above freezing since January 7 (and even then we were only in the upper 30s!).

TONIGHT/TOMORROW: A strong disturbance aloft will bring some clouds to the state late tonight and tomorrow morning, and it just might squeeze out a few snow flurries. Then, it will pull down some colder air, so our warming trend will have a one day setback tomorrow with a high back in the 30s along with a chilly north wind.

WEDNESDAY-FRIDAY: We finally get a nice warming trend going here. We will be well up in the 40s Wednesday, possibly approaching 50, and then mid 50s are likely Thursday and Friday, which is actually where we should be in early January in Alabama. Our average high never falls below 52 degrees in Birmingham based on weather records going back to the 1880s. This is a low latitude state, and it is not supposed to be cold for long periods of time in the winter, you know. These three days will also be dry, but a storm system will form in the western Gulf of Mexico late this week, which means changes for the weekend.

WEEKEND PEEK: We will highlight periods of rain Saturday as our storm in the Gulf moves inland. The heaviest rain, most likely, will come over the southern half of the state, with the lightest amounts over the Tennessee Valley of extreme North Alabama. Looks like a system that should bring about 1/2 to 1 inch for the Birmingham metro and the I-20 corridor Saturday. The rain moves out Saturday night, and Sunday looks like a decent day with the sky becoming partly sunny. No cold air behind Saturday’s rain producing system; the high Sunday should be in the 47 to 51 degree range. Not a warm day, but nothing extremely cold either.

LONG RANGE: Looks like a nice break from the brutal Arctic cold for the next 10 days or so, but the Arctic Oscillation shows signs of a big negative dip late in the month. The winter is far from over, and considering the depth of the cold air over the entire northern hemisphere, you have to figure we have a number of cold snaps to go.

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Busy day today… I have stops at Floyd Elementary in Gadsden, and Oak Mountain Intermediate in Shelby County… the next Weather Xtreme video will be posted by 3:30 or so this afternoon. Enjoy the day!

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