Couple of Forecast Notes

As Ryan has noted in his updates, the radar became alive once again this afternoon as showers and thunderstorms developed as we reached our convective temperature of 85 degrees. While showers were numerous, not everyone will get rain. If you are one of the fortunate ones to see rain at your location, you could receive a pretty good dousing with rainfall of 1 inch or slightly more possible. Radar showed that showers today were moving toward the northeast at speeds of 20 to 25 mph, a tad faster than we saw yesterday. The risk of localized flooding does remain but it is somewhat reduced from what we saw yesterday thanks to the slightly faster motion of the storms.

The latest model runs are pretty much showing a similar solution to that discussed in the Weather Xtreme Video earlier today. Surface high off to our east and south will keep us in the moisture-rish environment through the middle of the week. The upper flow continues to evolve toward a fairly deep trough in the eastern US. Small waves rippling through the flow will help to enhance the main focusing mechanism of daytime heating, so while showers are most likely during the afternoon and evening hours, we could see a few showers at almost any time. Its tough to time these ripples with much precision especially more than a couple of days out.

What is interesting is that the GFS holds onto the idea of a late July cold front making its what through the Southeast next weekend. The European, on the other hand, seems to have moved away from this solution with an eastern US trough that is simply not as strong as the GFS shows. If the GFS is right, and I hope it is, we could see an end to the moisture-rich environment, albeit for a brief period of maybe one or two days. I was a little more optimistic on this solution this morning when the two models were in reasonably close agreement than I am now. But it is a feature to keep our eyes on.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather