Central Alabama’s Most Detailed Seven Day Forecast

Monday Morning, October 26, 2020
Forecaster: Scott Martin (Twitter: @ScottMartinWx)

THE WORKWEEK AHEAD
MONDAY: We’ll start off with some patchy fog early, but we do not expect to see much sunshine at all through the start of the workweek. We’ll be dry with highs reaching the lower 70s to the lower 80s across the area.

TUESDAY: Zeta will start its run across the Gulf of Mexico and will be close enough to the Gulf Coast that moisture will start to increase across Central Alabama from south to north throughout the second half of the day. It will be breezy at times during the evening and overnight hours with rain becoming likely. Highs will be in the mid-70s to the lower 80s.

WEDNESDAY: Winds will continue to pick up throughout the day and so will our coverage in tropical rains across Central Alabama. Wind gusts could reach as high as 35 MPH as the center of Zeta will have made landfall and will begin to move northeastward across the area. While it will be moving through the area mainly at night, we will lack instability to help out with any tornado formation, but we can’t rule one or two out at this point to the east and southeast of the center. Highs will be in the 70s.

THURSDAY: The help of a frontal system moving through the southeast will help Zeta increase in forward speed and move out of the area by the midday hour. The heavier tropical rains and gusty winds will diminish and we may be left with a few lingering showers on the backside of the front and the accompanying surface low. Highs will be in the upper 60s to the upper 70s.

FRIDAY: Skies will start off partly cloudy across Central Alabama, but those clouds will diminish somewhat and leaving us with mostly sunny skies before sunset. It will be cooler as highs will range from the lower 60s in the northwest to the upper 60s in the southeast.

THE CENTRAL ALABAMA WEEKEND
SATURDAY: We’ll continue to have a cold front move through Central Alabama through the daylight hours that will bring showers and thunderstorms along and out ahead of the front. The front will be out of the area by tonight but showers may not end for the southeastern portions of the area until around midnight or so. We could see a few strong storms with gusty winds and small hail, but severe weather is not expected (non-zero threat). Highs will range from the upper 60s in the northwest to the lower 80s in the southeast.

SUNDAY: While it will be a dry day across the area on Sunday, we will have a good bit of clouds blocking out a good bit of the sunshine to end the weekend. Afternoon highs will be in the mid-70s to the lower 80s from northwest to southeast.

THE TROPICS
TROPICAL STORM ZETA: Zeta continues to get better organized and there has been an increase in the forward motion to the northwest during the overnight hours. The center is expected to move over the northeastern parts of the Yucatan Peninsula sometime later tonight or during the overnight hours. After that, the ridge located over the southeast will begin to influence Zeta and will begin to accelerate and move northward toward the Northern Gulf Coast. Landfall should occur on Wednesday somewhere on the Gulf Coast between the Western Louisiana Gulf Coast to the extreme western Florida Panhandle. Zeta should strengthen into a hurricane by tonight and stay as a category one hurricane until right before making landfall as it should weaken into a tropical storm. There is an increasing risk of storm surge and wind impacts along the Northern Gulf Coast, to go along with the increasing threat of deadly rip currents.

HURRICANE EPSILON: As of late Sunday night, Epsilon has transitioned into a strong post-tropical cyclone over the North Atlantic Ocean with winds maxing out at 70 MPH. It will continue to be a fish storm until it is swallowed up by a large extratropical low-pressure system by early Tuesday.

ON THIS DATE IN WEATHER HISTORY
1998 – Hurricane Mitch bottomed out at 905 millibars (26.72 inches) about 40 miles southeast of Swan Island in the western Caribbean, which made it the strongest October Atlantic hurricane on record and the fourth-strongest overall (at the time). Mitch’s sustained winds at the time were 180 mph. Mitch was a category 5 hurricane for 33 hours, the longest ever for an Atlantic hurricane. Mitch slowly moved southward, weakened, and made landfall on the north coast of Honduras over the next few days. A tremendous amount of rain fell in the mountains of Honduras. Rainfall estimates ran as high as 75 inches. Catastrophic flooding wiped out 50 years of progress in only 4 days.9086 people were killed in Honduras and adjacent Nicaragua. Total damage in Central America was 5.5 billion dollars.

BEACH FORECAST CENTER
Get the latest weather and rip current forecasts for the beaches from Dauphin Island, AL, to Panama City Beach, FL, on our Beach Forecast Center page. There, you can select the forecast of the region that you are interested in.

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