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Nice Today, Somewhat Wet Weekend Ahead

| March 29, 2013 @ 7:03 am

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There are some clouds floating high across the sky of Central Alabama this morning, and I do expect to see clouds increase throughout the day becoming cloudy into the afternoon and evening. Weak disturbances in the generally northwest to southeast flow aloft will be passing today, however, while a shower is possible, I think we stay essentially dry today.

But that changes on Saturday and Sunday. We continue to see disturbances passing through the flow but without a strong southward push, a weak surface front will settle into the area helping as a catalyst for showers and perhaps some thunder. Probably the best chances for rain come on Sunday and Monday, but I am not looking for any kind of all-day rains, just off and on showers. The risk for any severe weather seems pretty low for us. SPC does maintain some severe weather risk off to our west in the North Texas and Oklahoma area.

The upper flow becomes somewhat split on Tuesday, so I think we see a good cool down, but nothing extreme. GFS MOS values show highs dipping into the 50s but lows don’t drop below the 40s. We should be dry Tuesday and Wednesday. By Wednesday, a weak short wave is moving across the Gulf while a strong short wave is forecast to be moving out of the southern Rockies. It is this strong short wave that will generate a surface low in the Gulf Thursday and bring up rain chances for Central Alabama and especially South Alabama for Thursday and Friday. Confidence in the forecast here is only moderate with some definite position differences between the GFS and the ECMWF. The GFS is also showing a much deeper surface low than the European, a difference on the order of 10 millibars, so that lowers confidence in a specific forecast. In spite of these differences, however, both models generate a sizable rain shield.

And the good news is that both models take that system, no matter how strong or its exact position, east of Alabama for late Friday and into Saturday.

Looking into voodoo country, the GFS is very aggressive with a another wet system on April 8th and another one April 10th. Both of these appear to have some potential for producing severe weather, but that is much too far into the future to be specific.

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I’m filling in for James this morning, but he should be back this afternoon with the next edition of the Weather Xtreme Video. I will be back Saturday morning with my next posting. I hope you have an opportunity to enjoy the nice weather today as it becomes a bit more unsettled into the weekend. Have a great day and Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather

About the Author ()

Brian Peters is one of the television meteorologists at ABC3340 in Birmingham and a retired NWS Warning Coordination Meteorologist. He handles the weekend Weather Xtreme Videos and forecast discussion and is the Webmaster for the popular WeatherBrains podcast.

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