Very cold air is gathering over the northern United States and Canada this morning, and temperatures will stay below freezing today as far south as Indianapolis. This somewhat shallow cold air will spread southward tomorrow and Friday, as an upper level storm helps to spin up a surface low along the southern edge of the cold air. Right now, it looks like the track of the low will be too far north for any major snow or ice here in Alabama, but that is not the case from Arkansas into Tennessee and Kentucky. A major snow storm will likely bring snow amounts up to 8″ near Nashville and Knoxville Thursday night, Friday, and Friday night, with ice accumulations a little farther south, in places like Jackson and Memphis, TN. This could cause major travel problems and power outages there.
Here in central Alabama, we should see mainly rain on Friday. However, with all that cold air not too far away, the rain may change over to snow briefly before ending Friday night. Temperatures will also fall rapidly Friday night, so wet roads, especially bridges and overpasses, could become icy. With the snow pack close to us over the weekend, cold air will pour in. Temperartures on Saturday will be in the 30s, with lows Saturday night near 20 in BHM and in the teens over north Alabama. So, another hard freeze. It won’t stay bitterly cold as long this time, with temperatures in the 40s again by Monday.
The reason the precipitation often stops right as the cold air arrives has to do with the fact that, when cold air is moving in where warm air was, it tends to cause downward motion in the atmosphere. This dries up moisture, and often causes the precipitation to end just as the cold air gets here.
We’ll watch this one closely, since the ice and snow are not that far away, and any changes could cause some problems for extreme north Alabama.
For your meteorological consulting needs, call Coleman and Peters, LLC, at (205) 568-4401. We help attorneys, insurance adjusters, and others with weather-related cases.
