An all new edition of the ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player below, and on iTunes…
COOLER DAYS AHEAD: Phase one of the big April cool down has started. Our SKYCAM station in downtown Birmingham is reporting only 64 degrees as I write this, with a nice northerly breeze and a dewpoint of 49. A major upper trough will form over the eastern U.S. during the next few days, and our weather will get progressively cooler as we approach the weekend.
Here is an update on model output… these forecast temperatures are directly from the 12Z run of the GFS for Birmingham:
Tomorrow morning 37
Friday morning 36
Saturday morning 27
Sunday morning 25
Monday morning 30
As you can see, the trend toward colder temperatures continues. And, forget the model stuff, just look at observations and you can clearly see the depth of the cold air coming at us. Temperatures right now are in the teens up on the Canadian border, and the GFS numbers should be pretty close. So, now is the time to make preparations for freezing temperatures Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning. It still looks like the coldest morning will come early Easter Sunday, when just about everyone will drop into the 20s. The one thing that might save us is a convective blob forecast to develop over the western Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf coast region; if we see high clouds around here coming from that MCS, temperatures might not be as cold as the GFS suggests. But, as a course of least regret you have to plan on lows in the mid to upper 20s for now.
No rain through Monday of next week, although there will be cloudy periods on Friday with a few strong vorticity centers rotating around the deep upper trough over the eastern half of the nation.
NEXT WEEK AND BEYOND: The 12Z GFS remains rather aggressive with the system one week from today (Wednesday April 11)… it shows a vigorous upper trough northwest of Alabama that should bring rain and storms. Maybe even a chance of strong to severe thunderstorms. Then, another good rain event shows up around April 16. Following that rain the GFS shows another late season shot of cold air moving in here, but not quite as cold as what we expect this weekend.
SUPEROUTBREAK: We had so much traffic on the blog yesterday, you might have missed Bill Murray’s excellent collection of stories from our readers on the April 3-4, 1974 Superoutbreak of tornadoes. Just click on the “Weather History” category over on the left side of the blog to find them. Every post falls under one or more categories, and those category links are a great way of finding posts. Of course, you can use the search box as well.
WEATHER PARTY: Get all the latest weather news over on our sister site, WeatherParty.com. Be sure and register while you are there; you can submit stories and vote on them to determine what is published on the front page. Lots of new stories were added today.
I had a great time speaking to a big leadership team from McDonalds restaurants this morning at the Bessemer Civic Center; I will be back there tomorrow for another group from across Central Alabama. Look for the next Weather Xtreme video here on the blog and on iTunes by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow!
