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TO THE WEST: A tornado watch is in effect for much of southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana; as I write this Bossier Parrish (the eastern part of the Shreveport metro area) is under a tornado warning. Those big storms will fizzle out long before reaching Alabama, however, as the upper trough over Texas lifts to the northeast and weakens tonight. A few isolated showers and storms could fire up over North Alabama tonight or tomorrow, but they should be few and far between. We do note that surface based CAPE values are now over 1,000 j/kg over much of Alabama, but dynamics will weaken greatly as the trough passes north of Alabama and dampens out.
Thursday will be a warm and dry day as we are under a strong upper air ridge. To the west, a strong upper trough will continue to move slowly through the Rockies, producing lots of mountain snow for our friends out there.
COOLER FRIDAY: The GFS continues to show a wedge of cooler air moving into Alabama from the east on Friday. The high Friday will drop into the mid 70s with some clouds and a nice easterly breeze. No rain is expected, however, at that time.
THE WEEKEND: The big upper trough will finally bring a decent chance of showers and thunderstorms to Alabama by Saturday afternoon and Saturday night. Unfortunately the 12Z run of the GFS is coming in drier; it is suggesting only about 1/4 inch of rain for the I-20 corridor. That sure won’t make much of a dent in the big rain deficit for the year (now at 8.25″), but maybe it will wash a little of the pollen down the drain.
It still looks like the best chance of rain will come from around 2:00 p.m. Saturday until 4:00 a.m. Sunday. SPC does have the western half of Alabama in a severe weather risk on Saturday, but with the cooler air associated with the wedge, and the fact that the upper air dynamics will pass north of here leads me to think that for now the severe weather risk won’t be all that great, but we will know more as the system gets its act together later in the week.
NEXT WEEK AND BEYOND: The good news is that it looks like the upper ridge will be long gone during the first half April, and possibly longer. This will open the door for frequent rain producing systems and occasional shots of colder air. The GFS is advertising a nice rain event around the middle of next week, April 3 and 4, followed by a nice pop of colder air. How about that 1048 mb high showing up over Canada April 6… looks like winter still has a little fight left.
The 12Z run brings in another good rain event around April 10, but of course that is out in voodoo land and the timing will change. But, the screaming message here is that April should be much wetter than March.
WEATHER BRAINS: This week’s edition of our weekly 30 minute netcast is a good one because I am not on the show! I was at my son’s little league baseball game last night when the show was recorded. See more about the show and listen on the WeatherBrains web site, or you can subscribe on iTunes. Take your pick.
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The kindergarten students at Deer Valley Elementary in Hoover were a great audience this morning… be watching for them on the KIDCAM today on ABC 33/40 News at 5:00! I will have the next Weather Xtreme video posted by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow…
