The Monday afternoon edition of the ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player below, and on iTunes:
Strap in for a wild weather ride over the next five days. It will like a weather smorgasbord.
RIGHT NOW: SPC has just issued a tornado watch for Southeast Texas and much of Southwest Louisiana. A severe thunderstorm watch extends northward to include Shreveport and Texarkana. This is the big batch of storms we will deal with tomorrow, but our weather should remain quiet tonight with clouds increasing and mild temperatures.
TOMORROW: SPC maintains a slight risk of severe weather for almost all of Alabama (except for the extreme northern part of the state) tomorrow. Looks like the current area of rain and storms will be close to the West Alabama border during the pre-dawn hours tomorrow. These should weaken, but then re-develop, or strengthen again during the day tomorrow as they move through the state. The models seem to be faster (the 12Z set) on the position of the main band of storms; it now looks like the primary window for severe storms will come from about 12:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. The NAM continues to hint that surface based CAPE values will be close to 1000 j/kg over this part of Alabama, other models are not as unstable, and historically early season systems like this don’t have much surface based instability to work with.
The dynamics will be good, however, and the surface low will be near Jackson, TN at midday, which is favorable for severe weather and some rotating storms here. I still believe the greatest chance of tornadoes will be over the southern half of Alabama, where the instability will be higher, but you sure can’t rule out an isolated tornado over the northern counties. And, some large hail and strong winds will be possible at any time during the day.
Bottom line is that everyone needs to be close to a good source of severe weather information tomorrow in the event watches and warnings are needed, which is a pretty good possibility.
TO THE NORTH: This storm will be a big time snow producer in the cold air sector. Watch the video and see the watch/warning map, and the remarkable array of winter storm watches and warnings all the way from Wyoming and Nebraska all the way to New England. We should mention that a significant ice storm is possible tomorrow into Wednesday on the southern edge of the wintry precipitation… states like West Virginia and Virginia would have some real icing problems; maybe even Washington and Baltimore. Looks ugly.
DEEP SOUTH INTO THE DEEP FREEZE: In the wake of the big storm, Arctic air floods the southern part of the nation again. We won’t get out of the 30s on Wednesday and Thursday, and we might have a hard time getting above freezing on Thursday. Up in the Tennessee Valley, they might have a very difficult time getting out of the 20s. Still looks like the coldest morning will be Friday morning ,with lows in the 12 to 17 degree range around here. Remember, the air will be coming over the fresh snow and ice field to the north, meaning little chance to modify.
SATURDAY SNOW? The 12Z GFS is a little more aggressive with our Clipper system on Saturday; showing 1 to 2 inches of snow over the northern half of the state Saturday and Saturday night. Is it possible? You bet. Not a classic winter storm coming from the Gulf, but I have worked many Alberta Clippers that make the ground white over North Alabama. Lets get tomorrow’s system out of here and we can focus on the weekend situation more clearly. More cold air rolls in following the Clipper on Sunday; the GFS MOS numbers remain unrealistic.
For fun, watch the video and see the Japanese global model (the JMA) valid for Sunday at 6am over Alabama… yikes!
NEXT WEEK: The GFS flips to warmer, zonal flow early next week, but with so much cold air over the continent I am not confident any warm-up will last long in this pattern, even this late in the season.
LOGISTICAL NOTE: With a major winter storm looming for cities like Washington, D.C. (home of ABC 33/40’s sister station, WJLA-TV), often the server which hosts abc3340.com is slammed with traffic and is not accessible. The blog is NOT impacted by this traffic, and we upgraded to a new “powerhouse” server a couple of weeks ago, so traffic here should flow smoothly tomorrow.
I had a wonderful time visiting with some great American heroes today at the VA Hospital in Birmingham… I will try to post some pictures to the blog later tonight. Don’t forget we are coming to Jasper for Storm Alert 2007 this week (the show is Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m.)… see all the details here.
We will keep fresh updates coming on this big storm system… stay tuned!
