The Friday morning edition of the Weather Xtreme Video is on the web, available in the player below, and also on iTunes…
STORM ALERT XTREME: Hey, tomorrow is the day. I get e-mails all through the year from people asking about when they can be trained to spot tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. Well, your chance is here. Click here for all the details; we begin at 9:30 and hope to see all of our “blog family” members there. Since the 2007 Alabama International Auto Show is going on this weekend as well, there will be only one door open for our show; it is near the waterfall… just follow the signs. If you want to hang around and check out the auto show, the Birmingham Automobile Dealers Association is letting everyone in the Storm Alert XTREME session attend at no charge as a way of thanking you for being a volunteer storm spotter. Pretty cool. I was at the show last night and you will really love it. SEE YOU TOMORROW.
ANOTHER WARM ONE: We will forecast a high of 80 degrees today, but some spots should slip up into the low 80s, right at record levels for early November in Alabama. The record high for today in Birmingham is 82 set in 2002, prior to a major tornado outbreak that killed 12 people (scroll down to read more on the post below this one). The air remains dry and we will enjoy a good supply of sunshine.
To the west, SPC continues to define a slight severe weather risk today from East Texas up into southern parts of Missouri, but they have pulled all of Tennessee and Mississippi out of the risk.
SOME RAIN AND MUCH COOLER: The showers and storms will move into Alabama tomorrow morning, weakening as they arrive. Still looks like the best chance of showers will come from 3:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. Rainfall should be light; the NAM/WRF model continues to print only 0.01″ here, while the GFS shows 0.14″. Nothing to get excited about, so the day certainly won’t be a wash-out with numbers like that.
Model guidance continues to come in cooler for the weekend. Even some hint that temperatures might fall from the 60s tomorrow morning into the 50s tomorrow afternoon with a chilly north breeze. By Sunday morning, we will be well down in the 30s. Looks like we will need to drop lows down into the 33 to 36 degree range with some risk of a light freeze for the normally colder valleys across North Alabama. Sunday still looks like a bright, sunny day with a high in the 60s, but most likely low 60s.
NEXT WEEK: The GFS is backing down on the severe weather risk for the middle of next week, but it often struggles with systems 3 to 6 days in advance. Funny how it works, the model is often very good 7 to 8 days in advance, and then it really has a hard time in that 3 to 6 day time frame; then it gets back on track within 48 hours. I won’t flip-flop anything… we will still mention a chance of strong to severe storms in the Tuesday/Wednesday time frame, and a change to much cooler weather toward the end of next week. I have learned it is often best just to “turn off” the models in the 3 to 6 day time frame sometimes.
LONG RANGE: Watch the video and see how the 06Z GFS run wants to develop a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico around Thanksgiving. Hey, hurricane season does run through the end of November, you know. But, with the sea water temperatures in the upper 60s along the coast (the SST at Pensacola Beach this morning is 69 degrees F), I don’t think we need to get excited. Having said that, the water is much warmer over the far southern Gulf and the Caribbean, and those SSTs still support tropical development.
WEATHER PARTY: A reminder we have upgraded the software on our sister site, weatherparty.com. You will need to re-register to submit and vote on stories. And, if you have never registered before, now is a great time. There is always some very interesting reading on the site, and there are many enhancements on the upgrade.
I will be speaking at the Coosa Valley Electric Cooperative today over in Talladega County… I will be back in the office by mid-afternoon and should have the afternoon Weather Xtreme video posted on time by 3:30. Enjoy the warmth today, and see you tomorrow at the BJCC for Storm Alert XTREME!
