Let the Warmup Begin ! !

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One last very cold morning but the warm up to more seasonal temperatures has begun. Temperatures this morning dipped below the 20-degree mark in many locations, but it appears likely that this is the last really cold morning for about a week at least.

Surface high pressure was situated over Southwest Alabama this morning and will be gradually moving eastward keeping full sunshine for us today as the air warms into the upper 40s. With clear skies tonight, we’ll drop back into the mid 20s, still chilly just not as cold as this morning. By the way, 17 at my house and 18 at the Birmingham Airport are the coldest for those locations as of 6:45 am.

The surface high continues to progress eastward allowing moisture to return up the Mississippi River Valley. I think we stay dry with some clouds Wednesday, but by Thursday we could see some chance for rain and showers. In the upper air flow, a deep closed low will be positioned over the southern Rockies and a short wave will kick out across Texas on Wednesday. As it moves eastward it will dampen out as it comes into the ridge but allow for showers to occur with the best chances along the Gulf Coast.

The big closed low heads north-northeast Thursday toward the western Great Lakes, and as it does it will generate a surface storm system moving out of the central Rockies across the Central US. This storm system is likely to create travel issues for a substantial portion of the country for Thursday and Friday. For us, the rain chances go up on Friday and Saturday with Saturday likely to be a fairly wet day. But with a nearly zonal to slightly southwesterly flow aloft, we will stay seasonably cool with no extremes in temperature. This will probably feel warm to us after the rather chilling December we’ve seen.

Into Sunday and the first part of next week, the flow aloft remains slightly southwesterly keeping us seasonable. The GFS keeps a frontal system in our area or slightly to the south of us, so we might be in a pattern with some shower risk.

Looking much further ahead into voodoo country, the GFS maintains an active flow with another cold/wet system around the 8th and another one around the 12th.

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On the WeatherBrains podcast this week, we enjoyed visiting with Tyler Allison from Allison House and Greg Carbin from the Storm Prediction Center. Greg talked about FEMA, Hurricane Katrina, outdoor sirens, the upcoming National Severe Weather Workshop, and SPC performance metrics. Greg ended with his top ten weather events of 2010.

Thanks for staying tuned to the Weather Xtreme Video. I expect to have the next one posted by 7:30 or 8 tomorrow morning. Make it a great day and Godspeed.

-Brian-

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Category: Alabama's Weather