Dry Days With Lower Humidity

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DRY HEAT: You can really see the drop in dewpoints north of here; at 2:00 Muscle Shoals reported a temperature of 94 with a dewpoint of only 59, making the relative humidity 31 percent. Dry air will continue to cover the northern half of Alabama for the rest of the week, meaning sunny hot days (but with low humidity) and clear pleasant nights. A weak, secondary front will move through Thursday, but for now the chance of any significant shower activity looks so small we won’t mention it in the forecast. Then, a fresh supply of dry air arrives for Friday and the weekend.

We wonder if some of the coolest valleys across Northeast Alabama might reach the upper 50s at some point late this week or over the weekend. Just a little hint of fall is a good thing.

THE WEEKEND: Not enough evidence for any major chance of rain at this point; we still expect mostly sunny days and fair nights, with highs around 90. We do note the GFS tries to lower the high to 88 degrees on Saturday and Sunday, but we won’t go that low for now.

LONG RANGE: Quite frankly, the GFS looks really dry all the way through the end of August. Sure, we will have at some point the return of afternoon showers and storms, but the prospect of a widespread rain event doesn’t look good unless we have some help from the tropics.

TROPICAL NOTES: Tropical Storm Danielle could become a hurricane at any time tonight or tomorrow. Not much change in the overall thinking; it is expected to recurve into the open Atlantic well east of the U.S. this weekend. Another strong tropical wave has emerged off the coast of Africa, and has the potential to become Tropical Storm Earl at some point this week. Too early to determine if this one will recurve, or head toward the Lesser Antilles.

We note also that the Gulf of Mexico is disturbed along the boundary between the dry air around here, and moist tropical air to the south. While upper winds aren’t favorable for any development in this region, you have to watch old fronts in August when they make it that far south for possible backyard development.

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