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Any desperadoes out there?
“Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine
It’s hard to tell the night time from the day
You’re losin’ all your highs and lows
Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away?”
The sun sure won’t shine today for us…. even though we figured it would be by now. Parts of East and South Alabama are enjoying bright sunshine, and there are some breaks now in the overcast over West Alabama, but the clouds have been hanging tough for much of North-Cenrtal Alabama. Accordingly, temperatures have gone nowhere. In fact, it is colder now than it was at 6:00 this morning thanks to cold air advection; places like Haleyville and Cullman are only in the mid 30s this afternoon.
TONIGHT: We will be stubborn and continue to forecast a clearing trend this evening, and with a fair sky tonight temperatures will head down toward the freezing mark early tomorrow morning.
RAIN OR SNOW? The next wave will bring some precipitation in here late tomorrow into tomorrow night. See the Weather Xtreme video for all the juicy details, but the bottom line is that we won’t change our forecast very much…
*The Tennessee Valley of extreme north Alabama (Florence, Athens, Decatur, Huntsville, Scottsboro, etc) can expect a dusting to 1/2 inch of snow. A few isolated spots could see one inch. The best chance of snow for this part of Alabama will come from about 6:00 p.m. tomorrow through 2:00 a.m. Friday.
*For North-Central Alabama and the I-20/59 corridor (Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Anniston, Gadsden)… light rain will break out late tomorrow, followed by a brief change to light snow before ending late tomorrow night. Some places might see a dusting, but significant accumulation for now doesn’t look likely.
We note that the precipitation totals continue to look pretty small… the NAM is printing only 0.09″ for Birmingham, with the GFS showing a mere 0.02″. This means the chance of any really serious bridge icing due to standing water will be pretty small, although we should be below freezing by daybreak Friday.
REST OF THE DAY FRIDAY INTO THE WEEKEND: Based on the core of the coldest air staying north of Alabama, I think we can raise temperatures a bit for Friday and the weekend. Understand it will still be sharply colder, but the high Friday afternoon will be close to 40. We will also continue to mention some risk of morning snow flurries, mainly over the eastern half of the state.
We will forecast a low close to 20 early Saturday, followed by highs in the upper 40s Saturday and low 50s Sunday. The weekend will feature a good supply of sunshine with dry air staying in place.
NEXT WEEK: The next wave will bring more rain to Alabama Monday into Tuesday. Forecast thickness values suggest it might be a close call with some wintry precipitation for extreme North Alabama Monday night, but for now we will mention only liquid precipitation… we can fine tune this forecast as the event gets closer. Looks like 1/2 inch of rain will be likely, with the heavier totals over the southern half of the state. Drier air returns Wednesday.
LONG RANGE/VOODOO LAND: Still no sign of any serious warming trend through the first week in February with a mean upper trough over the eastern U.S. See the Weather Xtreme video for all details.
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