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As expected, scattered showers and thunderstorms continue to form across Alabama this afternoon. As I write this update around 1:30, the majority of the storms are along and west of I-65. The NWS office in Huntsville has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Lauderdale County; we will have a few other pulse storms this afternoon that might briefly reach severe limits. These are very difficult to deal with when it comes to warnings; they can produce a brief microburst that lasts for only a minute or two. Often, that happens toward the end of their life cycle when the storm begins to collapse.
Very interesting to note that so far this afternoon, Birmingham has failed to reach 90 degrees (the high as of 1:00 is 87). But, with a few more hours of heating still to come, we will probably edge into the low 90s. The morning clouds have kept temperatures down just a bit today.
MID-WEEK: Still no sign of any serious weather change through mid-week; the weather will remain hot and muggy with the daily opportunity for scattered, mainly afternoon and evening showers and storms. The deeper moisture will be over the western half of the state, but East Alabama should see a few scattered storms as well. Afternoon high temperatures will be generally in the 90 to 93 degree range.
FRIDAY/SATURDAY: The latest (12Z) run of the GFS continues to show a nice upper trough developing over the eastern U.S., and a surface front approaching Alabama from the north. This should lead to scattered to numerous showers and storms on Friday and Saturday; the coverage should be pretty decent for late June, and most communities should see at least one-half to one inch of rain. Of course, the rainfall distribution won’t be very even due to the convective nature of the precipitation.
SUNDAY/MONDAY: The model also continues to insist that drier air will invade North Alabama on Sunday, and much of the state on Monday. Cold frontal passages are pretty rare during July in Alabama, but not impossible. We will go ahead and begin to scale back on the chance of rain on both of these days.
LONG RANGE: The GFS continues to show the most intense heat over the western half of the U.S. during the first 10 days of July, and a mean upper trough over the Atlantic coast will bring the hope of an occasional surface front, like the one we expect around here on Saturday. No sign of any real “runaway” heat, or a prolonged period of upper 90s or higher.
TROPICS: The Atlantic basin remains very quiet. The core of the hurricane season comes during August, September, and early October.
WEATHER PARTY: Get all the latest weather news over on our sister site, WeatherParty.com. Be sure and register while you are there; you can submit stories and vote on them to determine what is published on the front page.
WEATHER BRAINS: We will record an all new Weather Brains episode tonight… it will be posted to the web and iTunes late tonight or early tomorrow morning. You can listen to last week’s show here.
I am about to head out to Regions Park, where I will be doing the weather live at 5:00 and 6:00 from the Barons/Suns game… both of those teams will play nightly this week (Wednesday’s game is a businessman’s special at 11:05 am). Look for the next Weather Xtreme video here by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow… and J.B. will be keeping an eye on the storms as they continue to blossom this afternoon.
