Sunshine Returns Today

The latest edition of the ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player below and on iTunes.

First, my apology to Mississippi State and all the wonderful people who live in Starkville. I put an ‘e’ in the name in my post yesterday, but that was an error. I used to get all over people who spelled ‘Fort Myers’ as ‘Fort Meyers” so I know how that is. I had a wonderful room at the Hotel Chester in downtown Starkville – it’s a great old hotel with a wonderful made to order breakfast. The breakfast built me up to take on the task of my presentation at the 7th Annual Southeast Severe Weather Symposium. And thanks to the symposium workers for laying in all the doughnuts for JB – I hope I did enough damage since JB wasn’t there.

Low clouds and fog with the low level moisture from the rains of the last several days should burn off fairly quickly this morning paving the way for a warm and sunny afternoon for Central Alabama. The highs today will be 16 to 20 degrees warmer than those of yesterday. It was interesting yesterday how little the temperature changed with the thick cloud deck in place.

High pressure moving across the Northeast US does not appear to be strong enough or far enough south to produce a wedge that will affect Alabama. However, we may see a bit of an east-west gradient in temperature due to the presence of the wedge a bit further east in South Carolina.

It looks like Central Alabama will remain dry for much of the upcoming week – at least until the end of the week. The upper level flow remains nearly zonal with a weak ridge in place. At the surface, moisture will return at mid-week, so there is the possibility of an isolated shower or two on Wednesday and Thursday, but I think we’ll remain dry for the most part.

But the latest computer model guidance is suggesting the next good shot at rain and thunderstorms will come Friday and perhaps early Saturday. When you are discussing a weather system about five days away, there can always be a need to adjust timing a tad, either forward if the weather system is slower to develop or a little sooner if it develops a little more quickly. And that weather system is likely to keep weather offices hopping to our west and northwest. SPC has outlined much of the Central Plains for the risk of severe weather from day 2 through day 5.

Once that system passes – early Saturday according to todays information – we will see the weather dry out and chill off. It does not appear now that we’re likely to see a widespread freeze, but a substantial trough over the eastern part of the country on Sunday is expected to bring a late season chill. I would expect to see low temperatures Sunday or Monday morning – that’s a week away – to be in the upper 30s which means some of the colder locations might see temperatures very close to freezing. It’s a long way out there, so we’ll be watching to see how the models trend as we get closer to the event.

Beyond that and well into voodoo land, the GFS is painting a period of rather dry and warm weather for the better part of a week.

James Spann should be back tomorrow morning bright and early with the next edition of the Weather Xtreme Video. I’m looking forward to a little entertainment this afternoon as my wife and I head over to the Virginia Samford Theater for some laughs with Norton Dill and his production of Sand Mountain Saturday Nite. I hope that you have a great Sunday and a wonderful week. God bless.

-Brian-

Category: Uncategorized