Cold Start But Looking Good

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Chill-ish start to the day with temperatures hovering around the freezing mark and below from about Muscle Shoals to Tuscaloosa to Birmingham to Anniston. Bill Murray has a nice roundup of temperatures in the post below.

After the cold start this morning we expect to see plenty of sunshine with temperatures warming into the 60s across Central Alabama. And Sunday will be another near perfect Fall day with slightly warmer temperatures. After Sunday the weather forecast becomes somewhat muddled with lots happening.

Looks like Monday will see a continuation of the warming trend as Central Alabama returns to mild values. Moisture increases, too, and a closed upper low develops over Texas, so we introduce showers into the forecast beginning on Tuesday, election day.

The closed low stays over Texas Tuesday and Wednesday and ejects Thursday bringing us what I think will be the best chance for rain. Thursday is beyond the QPF forecast, but it looks like we could see rainfall amounts of 1 to 2 inches since precipitable water values should be pretty high. The only fly there is that the storms should move through quickly which could limit rain amounts.

The upper level trough that kicks out the Texas closed low will intensify on Friday and become a negatively tilted trough on Saturday. This could bring another round of thunderstorms and rain to Central Alabama, and it looks like there could be some severe weather. Current model patterns – and remember that we are a week out – suggest the threat is north of us but we could see strong thunderstorms with the cold front.

In the longer range, it appears that we’ll stay mild with troughiness over the western US. Our next big shot at rain comes around the 18th or so – hedging here since timing could easily adjust that far into the future.

I hope that you have a great Saturday and get to spend some quality time with family and friends. My wife and I got the weekend off to a big start with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra last night. Today, I’m going to be heading out to rehearsal this afternoon – working on a part in the Christmas play at my church, Helena United Methodist. It’s a small role so I’ve gotten my lines down already – just got to work on expression and stage movement. Should be fun.

-Brian-

Category: Pre-November 2010 Posts