Showers Over The Weekend
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WARM-UP CONTINUES: While most places are in the 27-34 degree range early this morning, we warm nicely today with a high in the mid 60s this afternoon with a partly sunny sky. Clouds will thicken late in the day and tonight ahead of a slow moving feature over South Texas that will bring the risk of a little rain to Alabama over the weekend.
TOMORROW/SUNDAY: We will maintain the risk of showers across Alabama on both days, but the rain shouldn’t be really heavy or persistent. Just keep in mind you will have to dodge raindrops at times if you have something planned outdoors. And, the weather stays mild with afternoon highs in the 66-69 degree range, about 15 degrees above average for early January in Alabama.
NEXT WEEK: Not much change on Monday; very mild with a chance of showers. We are getting into a little model madness beyond that, with the 06Z GFS straying from our core ideas, but the ECMWF remains steady and we will continue to forecast a chance of strong to severe thunderstorms Tuesday afternoon and Tuesday night with a strong upper wave coming at us from the west. Way too much uncertainty to really define the threat; severe weather can happen in January, but usually instability values are too low for a major threat.
Some lingering light rain is possible on Wednesday as the storm system moves out of the state.
Beyond that, model madness makes a specific solution difficult, but no doubt we should turn very cold around the following weekend (Jan 14-15) as the gates to the Yukon open up. The 06Z GFS loses the cold air completely, but that solution is rejected. The ECMWF shows an interesting idea; a system down in the Gulf passes south of Alabama Friday, almost flirting with a setup for some wintry precipitation here, followed by the Arctic blast for the weekend.
The AO (Arctic Oscillation) trends negative at mid-month on the ensembles, but the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) remains neutral to positive. So, the very cold air over Alaska and western Canada will begin to move, but just how much gets here, and how long it lasts, remains uncertain. See the Weather Xtreme video for details.
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Category: Alabama's Weather