Another Warm-ish Day

* * * Note: No Weather Xtreme Video this morning due to my work with the Honda Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park * * *

Central Alabama has awoken to a low deck of clouds this morning as a result of a moist layer at the surface along with southerly flow around the surface high situated over the Florida Peninsula. The air was much drier above above about 7,000 feet according to the sounding from last night at the Shelby County Airport. Hopefully the low clouds this morning will hang in until 11 am or so which will help to retard the heating process just a little. However, after setting a number of record highs yesterday, the records for today are also in jeopardy. The longer the clouds hang tough the less likely we are to tie or break records.

The morning lows were still quite warm for April with most airport locations reporting values in the 60s – that’s about 20 degrees above the average lows for this time of year.

The big upper ridge that has helped create the heat will be breaking down Monday under the onslaught of a strong trough coming out of the Rockies. The trough will move fairly quickly by, so I think the greatest threat of thunderstorms will come Monday afternoon into Monday evening. Thunderstorms may continue after midnight especially across the eastern sections of Central Alabama. SPC has much of Mississippi, the northern two-thirds of Alabama and Middle Tennessee within a slight risk area for tomorrow. The main threat appears to be damaging wind with the squall line. However, should discrete cells develop ahead of the line as the atmosphere heats and destabilizes, we could see a potential for isolated tornadoes.

Rainfall amounts will average around one half in most locations, however, isolated stronger storms could dump up to an inch in spots.

The front should sweep through Monday night and Tuesday morning providing us with a beautiful and less humid Tuesday. We should see dew points drop back into the 40s with the air mass behind the front. Wednesday will be another very nice day as temperatures warm a little climbing back toward the upper 70s.

Thursday will become a transition day as another trough is forecast to come at us from the Northwest US. This trough is forecast to dig in becoming a closed low on Friday over Iowa and become negatively tilted. This will take the surface low toward the Great Lakes on Friday as a cold front swings through the Southeast US during the day Friday. SPC has held off on identifying a specific area just yet primarily because of model differences that far out.

The front should get through the Southeast US by Saturday morning which will open the gates for a wonderful weekend with some chilly temperatures possible by Sunday – like lows in the 30s and highs only in the 60s.

Peeking into voodoo country, the trough stays over the East Coast for a couple of days then the flow goes nearly zonal with a series of short waves passing through the flow. One trough comes in on the 20th with an even stronger trough around the 22nd. The flow turns more zonal again around the 25th.

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I’m working at the Honda Indy Grand Prix again today, and today is the big race. It has been fun watching the races from the Race Control Building which buffers the loud sound coming from the cars. Practice has just started again for the Indy cars and drivers. Going to be a great day, albeit a tad warm, for race day here. Thanks for staying tuned and pardoning the lack of video this weekend. I have plenty of bandwidth but no “quiet” place to get the video recorded. Godspeed.

-Brian-

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Category: Alabama's Weather