Summer Heat Rolls On!

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I know there was a great deal of news with the football upset yesterday, but there was quite a bit of weather news as well. Birmingham and Tuscaloosa both reached the 90-degree mark – 90 at Birmingham and 91 at Tuscaloosa – each 1 degree from their respective record highs. Anniston only reached 89, however, that value established a new record for that date for that station. And it appears that the October heat will continue to roll along for today and Monday before we see some break again on Tuesday.

In the upper atmosphere, we have a ridge which is bringing us the warmth along with a surface high pressure system sprawled across the eastern half of the country. A fairly strong trough with a closed low is moving out of the Central Rockies and should bring a cold front through the area late in the day Tuesday. This brings us our best chance for some rain, however, those chances are relatively slim thanks to a limited amount of moisture. I think many of us will remain dry with only some isolated showers that will wet a few spots.

The good news with the front while not rain will be another round of cooler weather. The trough sets up over the eastern US putting us under the influence of a northwesterly flow. This should drop temperatures back to seasonal values with highs in the upper 70s to lower 80s and away from the dreaded 90s.

This sets us up for a dry and mild weekend for both high school football games Friday night and college games on Saturday.

With the closed low and some moisture to our west, the Storm Prediction Center has outlooked a small area of Oklahoma and Texas for a slight risk today. As the trough and closed low move eastward and southeastward the severe threat moves primarily to East Texas. Again, though, this system is not tapping into any significant moisture, so I do not expect to see any significant rain for Central Alabama.

Tropics are still a bit active. Otto diminished faster than expected and is down to a tropical storm moving in the open Atlantic. The area of cloudiness in the Southwest Caribbean has become better organized and may become a tropical system in the next 48 hours. It is close to land so it will be dealing with that issue, too. The model guidance is all over the place, but in this position the storm has some prospect of working into the Gulf of Mexico. Seems most likely that it will move more westward, so we’ll be watching it to see how it develops.

Long range GFS guidance suggests two chances for rain, one around the 20th and another around the 25th or 26th. We need them both, but that is mighty far into the future and well into voodoo country.

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I had a great day staffing the gate at Cheaha State Park yesterday. The weather was gorgeous though a little warm. Colors are beginning to show a bit more but they still remain somewhat muted. There are still some bright red leaves on trees here and there. James Spann will be back with the next Weather Xtreme Video first thing Monday morning. Make it a great day and Godspeed.

-Brian-

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