The Tuesday morning ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player below, and on iTunes:
RAIN RETURNS: Moist air is returning to Alabama today, and a short wave aloft will bring the chance of showers and thunderstorms by mid to late afternoon into tonight. SPC maintains a slight risk of severe weather today for West Tennessee, East Arkansas, and far North Mississippi. Alabama is not in this risk, and this is certainly not a really good setup for severe weather with marginal instability and wind fields. However, a few strong storms are certainly possible tonight, and as I have said here countless times, when it comes to thunderstorms expect the unexpected. We will keep an eye on things.
The 06z GFS is a little slower, and keeps the chance of showers and storms going through midday tomorrow until the vort max finally passes east of the state. Model extraction from the NAM shows only 0.27″ of rain with this system, while the GFS prints 0.48″ for Birmingham.
SPRING FEVER: Thursday and Friday look like wonderful weather days for Alabama, with ample sunshine and a high between 70 and 73 on both days. To the west, all eyes will be on the developing system that should bring a major severe weather threat to much of the Central and Southeast U.S. by the weekend.
WEEKEND SEVERE WEATHER THREAT: The 06Z GFS forecasts the surface low to move from Amarillo, Texas Friday night to near Chicago on Sunday afternoon, deepening to 982 mb along the way. The initial outbreak of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes will be over the Plains on Saturday, with the threat shifting into Alabama on Sunday. The 06Z GFS (the latest run I have in the house) hints the best chance of severe weather here will come from about midnight Saturday night through 9:00 a.m. Sunday, but that might be too fast. For now we will continue to target Sunday as our primary severe weather day.
It is way too early in the game to determine if we will be dealing with a long squall line (major threat would be damaging straight line winds), or a more cellular, supercell event with a significant chance of tornadoes. Mesoscale features will really determine the true severity of the event, and we won’t know how it all comes together until the system gets on the board late this week. For now the best we can do is simply say there is a significant chance of severe weather late Saturday night and Sunday; stay tuned to the blog for the latest on the risk.
NEXT WEEK: The GFS is all over the board on events next week; the 06Z run is back on the idea of a second thunderstorm event on Tuesday of next week as yet another negative tilt upper short wave passes north of the state. No real confidence in that solution.
LONG RANGE: Another significant severe weather shows up around March 2-3… sure looks like the 2007 spring tornado season will be getting off to a busy start. Also, let me remind you not to put away the winter clothes. Spring fever will be breaking out later this week, but we will have multiple cold snaps through March.
WEATHER PARTY: Join the party on our sister site, weatherparty.com. Get the latest weather related news from around the U.S. and the world; always something interesting to read over there. And, if you stumble across an interesting weather story, be sure and submit the site.
STORM ALERT 2007: We will be in Jacksonville this Thursday evening at 7:00 at the Jacksonville High School gym; we hope to see you there!
This is a very busy week… today I head deep into Alabama’s Black Belt; I will be speaking at Uniontown Elementary School down in far southern Perry County. I should be back in time to get the afternoon Weather Xtreme video loaded by 3:30 or so this afternoon… enjoy the day!
