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In addition to the tragic events of this morning, the current forecast presents a challenge today and into the weekend. I’m posting this Weather Xtreme Video at the last minute since James Spann has been involved with reports on the crash of the UPS aircraft near the airport.
Today’s challenge has to do with how far any dry air will get into the state. At this writing, it looks like only a limited amount of drier air will encroach into northern Alabama, but the bulk of the showers will push south of the Birmingham area for the afternoon. So look for showers likely this morning with a bit of a reduction in showers over Central Alabama this afternoon.
Due to the front lingering in or close to Central Alabama along with weak surface waves traveling along the frontal boundary, I don’t think we can remove rain chances completely from the forecast. And then we have the issue of the weak tropical disturbance currently located in the western Caribbean. This disturbance does not seem destined to become a tropical system, but the GFS is forecasting it to become stronger as it approaches the Central Gulf Coast on Saturday afternoon. The ECMWF brings a surface weakness into the Central Gulf Coast, too, but it is much weaker. So the GFS appears to be the outlier for now. In either case, it would appear that we may be headed for a very wet weekend along with much of the Central Gulf Coast.
Good news is that with all of the clouds we will see afternoon highs in the middle and upper 80s for the next several days as well as lows dipping backward a bit. But rain chances continue to be higher than we usually expect. This is definitely a stay tuned situation.
Beach goers will also be seeing some unsettled weather for the next 5 to 7 days with periods of showers and a flash flood watch in effect through this evening. Highs should be held to the middle 80s along the coast.
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Sorry for all of the reduced weather coverage in light of the morning events. I think James Spann will have an afternoon update. Godspeed.
-Brian-
