The Friday afternoon edition of the ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player below, and on iTunes:
At 2:00 p.m. the Birmingham Airport is reporting 37 degrees, which is 21 degrees below the “normal” high of 58 for February 16. And, that observation is with maximum sunshine. Cold air will continue to cover the state through the weekend, and another significant freeze is ahead tonight, but we don’t expect temperatures to be as cold as last night. Most communities around here will be somewhere between 22 and 29 degrees by daybreak tomorrow.
WEEKEND CLIPPER: Our Alberta Clipper shows up nicely on satellite images this afternoon, and it will roll through here during the late afternoon and nighttime hours tomorrow. Not much change in the overall thinking; mostly snow flurries for the I-20 corridor, with periods of light snow north of U.S. 278. The best chance of light accumulation will be over the high terrain of Northeast Alabama, mainly over Jackson and DeKalb counties. To the north, parts of Tennessee could see one to two inches of snow; maybe even more for the Great Smoky Mountains.
NEXT WEEK: The upper air pattern will deamplify next week which will allow for a very welcomed warming trend across the nation. Monday will be mostly sunny with a high in the 50s; and we are still forecasting rain and storms on Wednesday. The 12Z GFS has shifted the mid-week system back to the north, with the surface low near Tupelo at midday Wednesday. The placement of the low will determine if we have any significant chance of strong to severe storms.
LONG RANGE: The 12Z GFS is showing another good cold snap around the first of March; I do expect a number of these since so much of the continent is covered by ice and snow right now. There are also several good opportunities for strong to severe storms along the way as the 2007 spring tornado season gets underway.
WEATHER PARTY: Don’t forget to bookmark our sister site, weatherparty.com, for the latest weather related news. A very interesting story is over there about television meteorologists in Cleveland that are against the catastrophic, man-made global warming hype. Sound familiar?
Brian Peters and Bill Murray will have the updates here on the blog over the weekend; my next Weather Xtreme video will be Monday morning at 7:00. Be sure and send pictures this weekend if you have snow at your place; the address to use is
Have a great weekend!
