Just A Few Showers

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A very moist airmass will cover Alabama today and tomorrow, but there really isn’t a big trigger for rain, so we will mention only scattered showers and a few storms during the next 48 hours. Very much a hit and miss situation. Some spots might see 1/4 to 1/2 inch of rain, but others won’t get enough to wet the pavement. The sky will be cloudy at times, humidity levels will remain high, and highs will be in the low 80s.

THE WEEKEND: Drier air slips into Alabama from the east, and the chance of rain looks very small on Saturday and Sunday. Any showers will be few and far between, and the weather will feel more like summer with highs in the mid to upper 80s.

RACE WEEKEND: For Saturday’s Mountain Dew 250 at the Talladega Superspeedway, there is only a small risk of a shower during the race, and temperatures will be in the 84 to 87 degree range with fairly high humidity values. It will feel more like a summer day. Pretty much the same story for Sunday’s UAW-Ford 500; a partly sunny sky with race temperatures between 84 and 87, and only a slight risk of a shower during the big event.

FOOTBALL WEEKEND: Summer-like weather is the story for Tuscaloosa on Saturday, which is homecoming day on the campus of the University of Alabama. Alabama will host Houston at Bryant-Denny Stadium shortly after 2:00 p.m. The sky will be partly sunny, and the kickoff temperature will be a toasty 86 degrees. Auburn will host Vanderbilt at 11:30 a.m…. the temperature will be near 82 degrees at kickoff with a mixture of sun and clouds during the game. Once again, the chance of a shower will be small. UAB will be in Starkville to take on Mississippi State (1:30 kickoff). Expect a kickoff temperature near 85 degrees with just a slight risk of a shower during the game.

NEXT WEEK: Another tropical system will move into the southern Gulf of Mexico early in the week. Environmental conditions would seem to favor this becoming a organized tropical storm as it moves to the west. The GFS keeps this one moving to the west, with it clipping the northern tip of the Yucatan peninsula and moving into the Mexican coast, well south of Brownsville, Texas, late in the week. But, the Canadian turns this thing to the north/northwest in response to an upper trough in the mid-latitude westerlies, which makes a big dent in the ridge north of the system. The Canadian also develops this thing into a hurricane. Of course, all of this is pure speculation at this point. Lets get the system on the board over the weekend and then we can get a good look at the track ideas.

LONG RANGE: The 00Z GFS still shows a nice pattern for cool weather over the eastern half of the nation in the October 18-19 time frame; that setup has been on a few runs back to back now, and could bring some really chilly air down this way. Still voodoo, however…

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Quite a busy day today… this morning I will be at the Community Awareness Day at Linn Park in downtown Birmingham, then it is on to Tuscaloosa where I will be doing the weather live at 5:00 and 6:00 from the “Nite On The Green” at the Bryant Conference Center; this is to raise money for breast cancer research.

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