Nice Today, Stormy Monday

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Look for another gorgeous day across Central Alabama, much like yesterday, but with a few more clouds. Fog across Southeast Alabama has prompted a dense fog advisory for places like Montgomery, Dothan, and Eufaula, but the for should burn off by 9 am or so. I still expect to see the mercury climb nicely into the mid 70s across our area even with a few more clouds. But while we are enjoying a very nice day, a weather system is shaping up that could bring some severe thunderstorms with damaging wind and large hail to the area on Monday.

Aloft, a trough is coming out of the northern Rockies and will become negatively tilted as it reaches Minnesota. A fairly deep surface low will be situated near the western tip of Lake Superior with a secondary low in the Ohio Valley while a cold front trails southwestward into the Lower Mississippi River Valley. Ahead of the front from about mid afternoon, say 2 pm or so, until roughly about midnight, severe thunderstorms and large hail will be possible in an area from about Meridian, MS, to Jackson, KY, including places like Birmingham, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Knoxville. As I noted yesterday, the environment appears to be characterized by strong instability but low shear. This means that the threats will be primarily damaging wind and large hail. Details on the instability and shear are in the video.

The atmosphere will stabilize after sunset, so the threat of severe weather should diminish rapidly shortly after the sun sets. One small fly in the pattern is a weak inversion just below 700 millibars, but as long as it is not stronger than the GFS is suggesting, it should be easily broken.

The front moves by late Monday evening pushing the rain and storms eastward away from Alabama. We should see a return to sunshine on Tuesday, but as the trough slowly deepens over the East Coast, look for a cooling trend with Tuesday nice with highs in the mid 60s but Wednesday a tad chillier with highs around 60 degrees. Morning lows will dip into the upper 30s on Wednesday and Thursday morning, so look for patchy frost in those typically colder locations.

Thursday promises a return of clouds and perhaps some rain. We’ve got some model differences from Thursday into the weekend, primarily in the position and timing of the system. But we should be somewhat wet as we head into the weekend with fast moving disturbances in the upper flow that will generate a surface low along the Gulf Coast. In spite of the model differences, both longer range models do show the system moving east of us with improving weather on Sunday.

Week 2, also known affectionately as voodoo country, promises some interesting changes. If the GFS is correct, and we always have our doubts this far out, we are in for a substantial freeze around March 26th. That will be followed by a warmup as we reach April 1st along with a return of rain.

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I hope you will be able to enjoy the taste of Spring today by getting out into the warm day. James Spann will be back with the next edition of the Weather Xtreme Video first thing on Monday morning. Have a wonderful day and Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather