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What a mid-April day in Alabama. The biggest question is the frozen precipitation… is it hail, sleet, or graupel? Not an easy answer, but based on the convective nature of the showers due to the very cold air aloft, I would suggest many of the ice reports this afternoon are in the hail family. Here is the official AMS glossary definition of hail:
“Precipitation in the form of balls or irregular lumps of ice, always produced by convective clouds”
We will let our big brain, Tim Coleman, make the call since he is almost a PHD guy now.
COLD UP TOP: I notice the 12Z sounding from the Shelby County Airport is showing a 500 mb temperature near -30 (C), or -22 (F). That is about as cold as it gets up there; that cold air aloft is making the air unstable, and those rising parcels are responsible for the showers on radar. They will go away quickly this evening.
HOW COLD? Both the NAM and the GFS are printing 34 for Birmingham tomorrow morning. The great Alabama weather legend, J.B. Elliott, who forecasts the afternoon shift for us, is forecast an average low of 31 tomorrow morning. A north wind of 4 to 8 mph should help prevent a major frost, and that wind will also keep the low level air mixed a bit, keeping us generally out of the 20s, as the surface high remains west of Alabama.
The bottom line is that we don’t expect an especially damaging freeze tonight, but growers will need to stay up late watching temperature and wind trends.
We should also note that Wednesday morning will be cold, and some of the colder places near the Georgia border might be close to freezing at daybreak Wednesday. After that, no more freeze worries until the fall.
WARMER DAYS: We will rise into the low 60s tomorrow, with low 70s likely by Wednesday. Thursday will be dry and mild as well with a high in the 70s.
ANOTHER SEVERE WEATHER FRIDAY? The 12Z GFS is coming in a stronger and faster with our end of the week system. Before we get carried away with a severe weather threat Friday, lets watch a few more model runs since there has not been a great deal of run to run consistency in recent days.
The weekend at this point looks dry with mild days and cool nights (70s and 40s).
LONG RANGER: A major upper trough develops over the western U.S. early next week, but the trends have suggested this upper trough will pass mainly north of here, leaving us with only a weakening cold front sometime during the latter half of next week.
WEATHER BRAINS: Don’t forget you can listen to our weekly 30 minute netcast anytime on the web, or on iTunes. This is the show all about weather featuring many familiar voices, including our meteorologists here at ABC 33/40. You can even listen here on the blog; look for the player on the top left. We are going to wait until Brian Peters gets back in town to record this week’s show… we will try to knock it out tomorrow at some point.
I had a great time seeing all of my pals in the third grade today at South Shades Crest Elementary in Hoover… be looking for them, and the third graders from Gardendale Elementary, on the KIDCAM today at 5:00 on ABC 33/40 News. Gardendale was scheduled to be on Friday, but it never made it to air due to tornado coverage!
Look for the next Weather Xtreme video here by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow….
