Nice Weekend But Cool-ish

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A weak surface low moving across the northern Gulf has created a deck of clouds across much of Central Alabama as well as some light rain across South Alabama and Northwest Florida. This surface low should move along quickly returned Central Alabama to a sunny afternoon with highs into the lower 50s. All-in-all, a very nice day for late February in spite of the fact that temperature are nearly 10 degrees lower than what is typical for this time of year. Our afternoon high ought to be around 61.

And things are winding down for our neighbors to the north as that storm system moves away from the Mid-Atlantic states and New England. But for our friends to the west, there is a Tsunami Warning in effect for Hawaii as a result of a strong earthquake in Chile.

It should be a pleasant day on Sunday with lots of sun and temperatures again climbing into the 50s. Monday will also start out okay but clouds will increase as the next upper level storm system advances our way. This is certainly going to challenge forecasters as the surface low moves along and just offshore of the Gulf coast. There is still much uncertainty with our future weather, and I am not prepared to step out with a specific forecast on snow just yet. Here is the overall expectation. It appears that the heaviest precipitation will remain along the Gulf coast with the cold air in place down to about Montgomery. This would mean snow for the area from Montgomery to about Cullman. The 06Z GFS model run is suggesting the greatest snow could be between Clanton and Montgomery with lighter amounts as you go north tapering off to little more than flurries around Cullman.

The precipitation will begin as rain Monday afternoon and evening and then change over to all snow after midnight. Light snow could continue through much of the day on Tuesday. It goes without saying that there will be a lot of attention to this developing weather situation over the next several days. The warmup through midday Monday is certainly one of the factors to be evaluated since the atmosphere will have to be chilled again. So we’ll be watching and churning away on each model run.

That storm system intensifies as it gets into the Atlantic and moves out to sea. However, due to the long wave trough remaining over the eastern half of the country, we’ll remain cold through much of the week with some clouds on Wednesday and perhaps a few flurries. By next weekend the upper air pattern becomes much less amplified, so we should see a nice warmup, but that still means highs at or slightly below seasonal values.

And the long range projections known affectionately as voodoo country continues to show an active pattern with numerous traveling storm systems for us to deal with. The next big rain event looks possible around the 9th and another one around the 14th/15th. It’s interesting to note that with the chilled pattern, there does not appear to be any significant severe weather threat on the horizon. And we must remember that March, April, and May constitute our severe weather season, so it would seem that the 2010 season may be slightly delayed.

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Thanks for tuning in. The good Colonel and I thank you for staying with us. I hope you have a great weekend and Godspeed.

-Brian-

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