Unsettled Today, Drier Tomorrow

An all new edition of the ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player on the right sidebar of the blog. You can subscribe to the Weather Xtreme video on iTunes by clicking here.

After a couple of days of quiet weather, our weather in Central Alabama has once again turned unsettled. A cluster of thunderstorms, referred to as a mesoscale convective system (MCS), was located over southern Mississippi this morning. This cluster of storms was associated with a short wave rounding the base of the overall long wave trough position. At the surface, a weak boundary was located across the area with a weak surface low pressure area moving along this boundary with the main low situated over the Great Lakes. So there is some uncertainty with the forecast depending on how far to the south the boundary will sag. MOS guidance values indicate that we should get into some drier air for a couple of days after today before moisture returns once again and we get back into a pattern of daily shower chances.

Rain chances will be fairly high today for much of Alabama with the best chances generally from about Birmingham southward. Showers and storms should be more scattered across the Tennessee Valley region. Clouds and the presence of showers will hold temperatures in check with highs around the middle 80s.

If you are at the beach, it could become somewhat wet there with the MCS and additional boundaries being laid down by that system. I would not expect to see much sunshine today. Tomorrow the weather should return to more of a scattered shower scenario with 6 to 8 hours of sunshine. Highs will be in the middle 80s today but should climb into the upper 80s tomorrow with more sun. Sea water temperature is running around 85 to 86 degrees.

Aloft the closed low over the Great Lakes gradually pulls northeastward as the upper ridge to the west noses into the Southeast US. A surface high settling into the western Ohio River Valley should help to keep the air dry for Sunday and Monday. By Tuesday, however, we should begin to see scattered showers return as we warm up toward the 90 degree mark. The pattern with the upper ridge just to our west and a slight northwesterly flow should produce those daily chances for showers driven by diurnal heating. Highs across Central Alabama will be in the range of 89 to 92.

Tropics are quiet with the main focus on Dorian. It continues to be a rather small storm battling unfavorable weather conditions. The NHC forecast downgrades Dorian to depression status later today. The track continues to be westward generally just north of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. And Flossie in the Pacific could affect Hawaii late Monday as a tropical storm.

Looking further out into week two, the GFS maintains the trough in the eastern US with the ridge to the west through the first part of August, so no real signs of extreme heat just yet.

And you can follow news and weather updates from ABC 33/40 on Twitter here. Stay in the know by following the whole gang – here’s the list…

The next weather xtreme video will be posted by 8 am or so on Sunday morning. Enjoy the day and Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather