The Friday morning edition of the ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player below, and on iTunes:
When it comes to thunderstorms, expect the unexpected. A good example of that this morning; even as of our 10:00 news last night I was still fairly confident the severe weather risk would be mainly south of U.S. 80, over the southern half of the state. Even with the surging dewpoints the surface based CAPE values were marginal.
I guess the best clue we should have seen was the constant model indication of the upper trough going negative tilt; that greatly increases diffluence overhead, and when the negative tilt started around midnight that is when the storms really picked up steam over East Mississippi. A good example of a low CAPE, high shear severe weather event that was not forecast well.
You can scroll down and read the blog posts during the night and pre-dawn hours… interesting reading. You can see when we started ramping up concern before midnight, and when the fireworks started. There are also some good damage reports from J.B. across East Mississippi and far western Alabama. Looks like our damage so far has been confined to the counties adjacent to the Mississippi border. The upper trough is in the process of dampening out this morning, and the severe weather threat will be winding down in the next few hours.
LATER TODAY: The rain will end from west to east this morning, and we might even have a few peeks of afternoon sunshine today. If the sun does break out, we will wind up in the low 70s this afternoon.
THE WEEKEND: No change in our thinking for tomorrow… morning clouds, then mild and breezy with intervals of sunshine. While we can’t rule out the chance of a few isolated showers, I think most of the day will be dry. We should touch the 70 degree mark again. But, the next wave will bring more rain and storms on Sunday. Should be another good rain producer, with at least one inch for most Alabama communities. I guess we need to use caution after this morning’s storms, but at this point it doesn’t look like a severe weather setup for Alabama.
NEXT WEEK: Much cooler air rolls into the state early next week. The GFS is trending colder with a deeper upper trough; it now gets us down in the mid 20s by Wednesday morning. We might have a hard time getting out of the 40s on Monday and Tuesday based on the 06Z run. While clouds might linger into Monday and possibly even Tuesday, the much of the week should be dry as the FCSM (Four Corners Storm Machine) takes a break.
LONG RANGE: Still looks like a major western U.S. upper trough forms in about a week, which will bring down much colder air into the western U.S. in the January 12-17 time frame. A major storm should form on the leading cold front January 15-16 which could bring more major snow totals in the general area from Denver to Minneapolis. That front will slowly approach Alabama, and there is still come concern about an extended rain event and possible flooding sometime around Jan 16-19. Some of the cold air reaches Alabama just after that, but the upper air winds still won’t allow the bitterly cold air to reach us. But, we are way out in voodoo land and we need to be careful in being too specific right now.
Thanks to J.B. Elliott, Jason Simpson, and John Oldshue for all the support this morning… Oldshue and Simpson staffed the office at the station while J.B. and I handled radio and Internet duties. I will have the next Weather Xtreme video posted by 3:30 this afternoon!
