Much Milder – Rain for the First

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Central Alabama is even milder this morning as the surface high has moved off the Atlantic Coast. This allows a southerly fetch all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the western Great Lakes area. Yesterday, the 5 am temperatures were in the 50s and those 50s were confined to Texas. This morning, 50s have surged northward all the way into Missouri and eastern Kansas. Across Central Alabama we were generally around the 50-degree mark, however, it was much cooler in the east central section with Alexander City coming in at 37.

The short wave trough was located near the Mississippi River this morning. As a result, rain was occurring from Northeast Tennessee across the Tennessee River Valley to New Orleans, LA. The short wave trough will move by fairly quickly so I suspect we’ll see the rain swept out of here by early this afternoon. Rainfall with this feature will be light with places that do get rain probably getting a tenth of an inch or less. Once the short wave passes, we should dry out even though we remain mostly cloudy until the next system arrives late Friday and early Saturday.

The deep trough over the Rockies along with the closed low will be coming out Friday. The closed low makes a beeline for the western Great Lakes while the trough inches ever so much closer. By Saturday, the upper low is into Canada along with the surface low which drags a cold front into the Southeast and Central Alabama. This means that the first day of 2011 is likely to be wet with rainfall amounts of 1 to 1.5 inches over a fairly wide area. There is also some risk of severe storms to our west on Friday as seen in the Day 2 outlook from SPC. There are still a number of uncertainties with this system with a full complement of severe weather a possibility.

The GFS moves the front by for Sunday allowing a cool down for us but nothing extreme. Lows Sunday and Monday will once again get to or slightly below the freezing mark with daytime highs in the lower 50s. Another trough is forecast to drop into the Southwest US which pumps up a ridge over us and keeps us in a mild southwesterly flow pattern. With a tap into Pacific moisture, we’ll probably see some passing clouds with rain chances picking up by early Wednesday. And those rain chances stick around into Thursday.

A peek into voodoo country suggests another cool down around the 12th of January with another substantial trough over the East Coast. But just like the current situation, the flow goes nearly zonal fairly quickly with most of the action in the northern stream. So nothing extreme appears likely in the first couple of weeks of January.

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Busy day with lots of “to do” items to take care of. Make it a great day. I expect to have the next Weather Xtreme Video posted by 7:30 or so on Friday morning. Godspeed.

-Brian-

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Category: Alabama's Weather