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Guess it is time to call it – NO white Christmas for Birmingham or Central Alabama this year. It would have been nice – and it was surely cold enough this morning with morning lows generally in the 20s. Some of those normally cooler spots made it into the upper teens especially in the area from Anniston to Gadsden to Fort Payne.
High cirrus clouds will be zipping across the Central Alabama sky today, but it should mean some decent periods of sunshine. This should allow a slight warmup with afternoon highs climbing into the mid 50s. And it appears likely that we will be dry through the middle of the week. This despite a couple of strong upper atmosphere short waves that will be moving across the Southeast tonight and again Wednesday. But with almost no moisture to work with, clouds will be the only weather we can expect.
By Thursday the Gulf should open up allowing moisture back into the lower levels. As that happens, another upper level trough (I think that is the third one this week) will move on by to our north. This will bring the upper flow around to the southwest and result in a front being dragged into Central Alabama. Moisture with the southwesterly flow plus the focus of the surface front plus various small scale disturbances in that flow should lead to a somewhat wet period as 2007 gets ready to close. Looks for rain chances from Thursday through the weekend and into the first of next week. This does not look like all day kinds of rains as the rain will come and go as the various disturbances move to the northeast. Timing these small features is quite difficult this far out.
The GFS promises another shot of extremely cold air for us around the third of January. At the moment there does not appear to be any serious threat for ice and snow, but it is something we’ll certainly be watching. The westerlies retreat a bit until another strong trough comes out of the west around the 8th of January.
I appreciate you taking the time to read and watch the Blog posts. I plan to have another posted tomorrow morning around 8 or so. All of us with the Blog and the ABC 3340 Weather Team wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year. God bless.
-Brian-
