I am in Mobile this morning participating in the 2008 Southeastern Coastal & Atmospheric Processes Symposium (SeCAPS) at the University of South Alabama campus. While I have a good Internet connection at the Homewood Suites, I don’t have quite enough time to prepare a full video, so please excuse it’s absence. I’ll try to have a video for tomorrow morning.
It looks like we should be in a favorable environment for showers today and tonight as a weak, nearly stationary front has drifted into North Alabama. It should be the focus for showers, but I’m not expecting an all day type rain. With good low level moisture and instability in place plus the help of a weak short wave moving through the upper level flow, showers and a few thunderstorms should be fairly numerous. That upper level disturbance was present on radar this morning in East Texas.
The cooler air mass is expected to remain north of Alabama as we hit pretty close to normal highs (70) for the next couple of days. And warm on the low temperature side with lows in the 50s. Like yesterday afternoon, we may see a few thunderstorms approach severe limits with hail as upper level temperatures are fairly cold. I think thunderstorms that produce hail may produce large amounts of marginally severe hail in the three-quarters to one inch range.
The overall character of the air mass does not change, but I do expect a slight drying Sunday though an isolated shower might be possible. And Monday should be rain free with our next system coming in on Tuesday. But like the current pattern the main storm track is well north of Alabama, so it is likely to be the case of another weak front dragging into the area before washing out somewhere in the state. Temperatures should remain fairly seasonal at or slightly above typical values for late March.
There is a wedge setting up on Sunday and Monday – that’s cold air coming around the end of the Appalachians. It could keep temperatures a bit chillier into extreme eastern Alabama. I would not be surprised to see Atlanta reach a high in the mid 50s while Anniston gets to the upper 60s on Sunday. But the effects of the wedge should decrease on Monday as the surface high moves east.
Mid week -Tuesday and Wednesday – looks dry and mild.
The GFS is now painting a pretty good system with a strong short wave moving through the central part of the country in the Friday time frame. This late next week system may have some potential for producing severe weather with a fairly strong upper trough coupled with a surface low moving across just to our north. But that’s a little heavy on speculation right now since we have two weak systems to deal with first. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that it is early April and we all know what that could mean.
The GFS remains pretty active with the overall pattern with another shot at rain around April 8 and 9 and 11, but I just as soon our weather keep the rain and systems on a steady track of every few days.
There have been a number of great presentation at SeCAPS 2008, and I certainly appreciate the invitation to speak at the event. I actually spoke at the symposium in 2005 and am very honored to be asked back. One of the wonderful aspects of meteorology is that it is a relatively small field, so when there is an opportunity to attend meetings like this, you get to catch up with people you have gotten to meet and know over the years. Special thanks to Ryan Wade and Daniel Lamb for the making the invitation.
I hope you have a great Saturday and get some rain so that we can continue to plug away at the rainfall deficit. It is certainly nice to be out of the D4 category of exceptional drought, but I’d like to see us get down to D1 or D2 at least. God bless.
-Brian-
