Big Time Cold Returns

The Wednesday morning edition of the ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player below, and on iTunes:

I have more pictures of yesterday’s storms from viewers… I will post them a little later this morning as time allows. NWS survey teams will be out today and we will know more about the number of tornadoes that touched down yesterday and last night. Remember, they will be using the new enhanced Fujita scale for those surveys now.

INTO THE DEEP FREEZE: In the wake of the powerful storm system that blew through here last night, very cold, Arctic air has returned. We will hold in the 30s all day today, and an icy northwest wind will keep the wind chill index below freezing most of the day. The sky should become partly sunny as the air slowly becomes drier. We head down into the low 20s by daybreak tomorrow, and the weather during the day tomorrow won’t be any warmer. But, the wind won’t be as fierce.

Still looks like our coldest morning will come early Friday, with teens likely across most of North Alabama. If the wind can go calm, then mid teens are possible as far south as I-20, with some single digit lows for the coldest valleys.

WEEKEND CLIPPER: A very strong impulse will dive down the back side of the Arctic trough over the eastern half of the nation over the weekend, and will bring the risk of some light snow to North Alabama. As we have stated here many times, these systems originate where there is no ocean, and moisture is very limited. But, I have lived through a number of these things that make the ground white. The best chance of accumulation still seems to be north of U.S. 278, or north of a line from Hamilton to Cullman to Gadsden, and in that region we are only talking an inch or two at the most. There is a chance the ground can become white as far south as I-20, but that only a chance. Bottom line is that this is not a major winter storm threat, but just be aware that a few periods of light snow are possible from Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning over parts of North Alabama.

NEXT WEEK: We begin to warm up a bit next week; the GFS brings a rather robust system in here Wednesday night of next week with some potential for strong to severe storms. In fact, a number of these kind of systems show up during the last 10 days of the month. You have to wonder if our spring tornado season will be active if this keeps up.

STORM ALERT 2007: We look forward to a big crowd in Jasper tomorrow night… the show begins at 7:00 at the CHS building downtown; the doors open at 5:00. We will have free t-shirts for the first 500 people, and we will also be giving away 20 NOAA Weather Radio receivers.

WEATHER PARTY: Keep up with the big Northeast U.S. snow storm, and all the other weather news of the day, over on our sister site, weatherparty.com. Be sure and register and you can submit links and vote on them to determine what is published to the front page.

I will work through hundreds of e-mails here and post more pictures from yesterday and last night here on the blog shortly… the next Waether Xtreme video will be ready by 3:30 this afternoon!

Category: Uncategorized