Stormy Start to Weekend

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

A good portion of the western half of Alabama was waking up to thunder and rain this morning as a squall line bisected the state roughly from Huntsville to Mobile. At the time I was writing this, the leading edge had just passed Birmingham.

It’s surely an interesting set up today that will challenge forecasters. The GFS is pretty much cut and dried bringing the front through the Birmingham area by early afternoon and allowing the weather to settle down. The NAM, on the other hand, hints at perhaps some recovery of the atmosphere before the drier, cooler air gets here. With as strong as the squall is and the size of the rain band, I tend to side with the GFS. Thus, my thinking is that we’ll see improving weather this afternoon for Central and West Alabama while the main rain threat will be south and east of Birmingham.

SPC still has a good portion of the southern two-thirds of Alabama outlooked for a slight risk of severe weather, and warnings were in effect as I write this for Choctaw, Marengo, and Sumter counties.

Looks like a fairly broad coverage of one inch or so of rainfall which will definitely be welcome.

The front is forecast to sweep out of here later tonight paving the way for a very nice Sunday. It looks like it could be a much cooler day with highs only in the 70 to 72 range after a cool start with lows around 50 or so.

The upcoming week shows an absence of any major weather systems. The upper pattern shows weak ridging, but the weak ridging also shows several weak disturbances moving through the flow. I think the atmosphere will be a tad dry to allow any significant rain with any of these disturbances, so I’m going with a dry forecast. The next chance for rain comes with a fairly vigorous short wave that swings by on Thursday. That should give us a pretty good chance for showers and hopefully clear the air for the weekend.

As you get into the weekend and the verge of voodoo country, the GFS brings a small chance of showers but my confidence in that is not very high. My confidence is not very high in the longer range solutions, either. The GFS out into voodoo country is painting a rather wet picture which has a number of large blobs of rain suggesting the possibility of some convective feedback in the longer range forecasts. If the GFS is right, the middle of May could be wet – but it is way out there so we’ll see.

I’m on temporary duty, so to speak, working with the Crawfish Boil downtown as their rainfall observer. I always find it strange to stay in a hotel when my house is just 25 minutes away. But it’s nice to experience Birmingham from a tourist perspective. I should have the next Weather Xtreme Video posted by 8 or so tomorrow morning. Stay dry and God bless.

-Brian-

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