You hear us talk about outflow boundaries from time to time. It is the air rushing out of a collapsing thunderstorm.
Today’s storms are pulse storms, meaning they go up quickly with an updraft, but since there is little wind shear, the precipitation comes right back down and smothers the updraft. The storms do not last very long.
That collpasing air hits the ground and spreads out. You know it as the cool rush that you feel sometimes in summer from a nearby storm.
Here is an outflow boundary spreading east and northeast from thunderstorms over eastern Tuscaloosa and Bibb Counties.
It could spur storm development along an arc from western Jefferson County down into Shelby County. It is most likley over western Jefferson County though, I think. That is because the trough has already allowed slightly drier air to filter down the I-65 corridor.
EDIT: 6:16 p.m….
Sure enough, the boundary did fire up a thunderstorm near Maylene…here is the radar image…
Cool stuff!
