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Beautiful start to the day with a gorgeous sunrise, but it looks like clouds will fill our sky along with some mild temperatures. I expect to see the afternoon highs today reach the mid 60s, a tad above those values you’d expect to see in mid February. But our real focus is on developments to the west.
A closed low at 500 millibars will be moving across West and Central Texas today as it begins to eject out of the Southwest. This will produce the possibility of severe weather across much of South and Southeast Texas today and tonight. The trough and surface low will be in the vicinity of Chicago by midday on Sunday, so I expect to see our atmosphere destabilize on Sunday. We will probably be dealing with a squall line that will be moving across Central Alabama primarily during the afternoon hours, noon to 6 pm, maybe beginning as early as 9 or 10 am along the Mississippi-Alabama line.
Because of the severe weather threat, we encourage all churches and places of worship to review their severe weather plans and make sure they have some way of getting the warnings such as NOAA Weather Radio.
SPC has adjusted the slight risk area for Sunday a bit further north, but I think there is still some question as to how far north the instability will reach. No question that there is a big severe weather threat across South Alabama and Northwest Florida. And in a similar fashion to the Super Tuesday outbreak, we have a lot of helicity so storms will rotate, but the question remains about the strength of the updrafts. I believe that we have a serious threat, so we’ll be watching carefully the changes coming about in our weather during the next 24 hours. For example, the morning sounding at the Shelby County Airport this morning already has a significant cap or inversion between 800 and 700 millibars. It’s not quite as strong as the Super Tuesday cap, so the upper air sounding data will bear close watching.
Rainfall should come in between one half and three quarters of an inch. Interesting that the NAM and GFS are way apart in their projections with the GFS much wetter at projections of one and a quarter inches while the NAM comes in with about half an inch. We’ll take whatever we can get, but let’s hope the wetter GFS is more correct.
The cold front moves through Sunday evening paving the way for cold air to dive into the Southeast. Monday is going to be a bit of a raw day with a strong northwest wind and temperatures changing little with strong cold air advection. It’s going to be one of those situations where your morning temperature may be the high for the day with some places in Central Alabama staying in the 30s.
The cold air modifies quickly with a nice warm up anticipated by Wednesday. The warm up should come just in time for the next system on Thursday. SPC has outlooked a large are of the Southeast including nearly all of Alabama for severe weather. The GFS forecast maps don’t appear to be quite as definitive as that, but with a surge of warm moist air, you can’t rule it out. It also means another shot at some much needed rain – fill them reservoirs!!
With an upper flow going somewhat zonal, a boundary is likely to be hanging around at the end of the week and into the weekend. This could keep our weather wet and showery.
Peering into voodoo country, the screaming message continues to be an active pattern. Looks like a storm system around the 22nd and the 2nd of March along with a somewhat wet period due to a boundary lurking around. But no skill with details, so we’ll focus on getting beyond the next system tomorrow.
Thanks for dropping by the Weather Xtreme Video. Please keep your eye on the weather tomorrow as we await another potential severe weather day. I hope your Saturday is a good one. I should have the next Weather Xtreme Video posted around 8 tomorrow morning. God bless.
-Brian-
