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Strap in for a wild ride on the Alabama roller coaster during the next seven days. Lots of changes; you will need a program/scorecard to keep up with it all. Lets break it down:
TODAY: More record warmth possible today. The record high for Birmingham today is 78 (set in 1971); we are forecasting 77, so we will be close. Like the past two days, the sky will be partly sunny and the chance of any one spot seeing a shower is tiny.
TOMORROW: The big Southwest U.S. upper trough is out of the cage… it weakens greatly and passes north of Alabama, dragging a cold front through here. Rain will be light; most likely a quarter-inch of less for most places.
FRIDAY: The GFS MOS shows a high of 65, while the NAM shows 55. Who do you believe? Considering all of the snow and ice north of here, and the shallow nature of the cold air, I side with the NAM. The day will be dry.
THE WEEKEND: Yep, model madness is creeping in after several days of really good agreement. The ECMWF, the GFS, and the NAM are singing a different tune. No doubt a significant storm system will impact Alabama, but the devil is in the details.
The GFS has adjusted north with the surface low; watch the video for the graphics. The 00Z run moves the surface low from Jackson to Nashville, which will keep us in warmer air and reduce the chance of the change to light snow or flurries Saturday night. It also suggests a better chance of strong storms over South Alabama.
The NAM is much slower; it has the surface low on the Texas/Louisiana border Saturday at midday… this would suggest the rain won’t get here until Saturday night.
What do we do? Not much for now… long time readers know I don’t change a forecast based on one model cycle; lets get the 12Z data in here and we will take a look. We continue to mention periods of rain on Saturday, with a chance of the rain changing to flurries Saturday night as cold air moves in.
One way or another, Sunday promises to be a cold, blustery day with temperatures having a hard time reaching the low 40s. And, somebody up in the interior part of New England is going to be slammed with a big time snow event.
NEXT WEEK: The first few days of next week will be dry but rather chilly. Forget the record warmth for a while.
LONG RANGE: The GFS is showing really nice rain events for Alabama on December 20 and again on Christmas Day, but with the model struggling with the weather this weekend, no way to resolve details beyond seven days. I think the key word is “changeable” for the rest of December.
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I will have the next Weather Xtreme video here by 3:30 this afternoon… enjoy the day!
