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QUIET TODAY: Today will be a mild day with a mostly cloudy sky. I do think the sun peeks out from time to time, and most places have a great chance of reaching 70 today. No more illegal overrunning areas of rain, hopefully. A shower or two could pop up on radar, but most places will be dry.
A SYSTEM TO WATCH: The next storm system now seems much more interesting in a number of ways based on the latest runs of the models. SPC has expanded the slight risk of severe weather to include a pretty good percentage of Alabama, all of Mississippi, and parts of the other adjacent states. Showers and storms will arrive tomorrow afternoon, continuing tomorrow night. Seems like the best jet stream dynamics will come into play tomorrow night, at a time when the surface based instability is not very impressive. Hopefully, we won’t have a big severe weather problem, but we have to remember there will be a stalled surface front around here somewhere, which means backed surface winds around that boundary and a decent amount of low level helicity for possible rotating updrafts. I hope it is not one of these all nighters with low topped convection and the occasional TVS trip on radar.
HEAVY RAIN? The HPC guys are suggesting 3 inches of rain are possible over the Tennessee Valley, along and just north of the stalled boundary with this event, with totals of 1 to 2 inches down this way. We note the latest NAM is printing 1.95″ of rain for Birmingham, so we will have to be on our guard for flooding potential with the wave moving through on Saturday. The ground is not saturated, so we should be able to handle that without too many problems. The rain should taper off Saturday afternoon.
SNOW FLAKES: Check out the Weather Xtreme video and see how both the 06Z GFS and NAM roll a cold core upper low through here late Saturday night into Sunday morning. We all know how problematic those things are, and you can’t ignore the possibility of dynamic cooling with some risk of snow flakes around here. We won’t go there yet… let’s take a look at the 12Z runs. Forecasting snow with cold core lows is very hard to do, even 12 hours in advance. Just be aware the idea is somewhere on the table.
Sunday will be sharply colder, with a freeze likely by Monday morning of next week. Then, most of next week looks quiet with dry and generally pleasant weather conditions.
STORM ALERT 2009: We will be in Cullman tonight at 7:00 for the last stop on the Storm Alert 2009 tour. The show will be at the Cullman Civic Center, and we hope to see you there. Get there early for a good seat: I will be at the site doing the weather at 5:00 and 6:00 on ABC 33/40 News.
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I have weather programs this morning at South Shades Crest Elementary, and Trace Crossings Elementary in Hoover. I should be able to produce the Weather Xtreme video before we head for Cullman. Enjoy the day!
