Rain For Christmas

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How about a shot from up north, as in the North Pole? While it is dark up there now, the video includes a view of the northern portion of the planet from back in June put together from NASA’s Terra satellite imagery.

Clouds stick around this morning but I do expect to see some breaks in the clouds by afternoon. Clearing has already occurred in low clouds over South Alabama and we do have high cirrus clouds above the lower cloud deck. But the pesky southwesterly flow bringing Pacific moisture across the Southeast US will return rain for Christmas Day. And the Euro and GFS are in pretty fair agreement on this event along with the next one, too. Interesting to note that the RPM model seems to be the outlier with a much drier solution.

We get a brief dry out Christmas night and into the early morning of Monday. But rain is forecast to return quickly with rain and showers arriving by Monday afternoon and early evening. This rain comes about as the big trough and closed low over the Southwest US finally kicks out across the southern tier of the US. This trough along with a surface low moves pretty quickly across the Southeast bringing an end to the rain Tuesday, probably during the morning. Clouds will stick around for much of Tuesday, so you can expect some drizzle or very light rain with that wrap around moisture.

Rainfall amounts are expected to be light on Christmas Day with than a quarter of an inch. But the next round late Monday and early Tuesday should bring around an inch to most locations.

Finally the weather improves on Wednesday as a surface high settles into the Lower Mississippi River Valley. A general troughiness over the eastern half of the country should keep us near average temperatures for late December. But some colder air appears likely around the 31st of December as a good trough with some respectable digging lowers the thicknesses substantially. This won’t be extreme cold, but should certainly put us below seasonal values for temperatures around the 1st of January.

The cool trend continues for the first few days of January with an interesting weather scenario around January 5th. This is the kind of scenario that could bring some winter weather to the Southeast. But remember this is well into voodoo country, so I half expect it to be gone on the next run. By the 8th we’re back into a mild pattern with another, yes another, closed low over the Southwest US putting us into mild weather again.

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I will be filling in on ABC 3340 over the next few weeks with the departure of Jason Simpson and vacation schedules. Looking forward to being back on television for several weeks. I hope your Christmas Eve is a good one. Godspeed.

-Brian-

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Category: Alabama's Weather