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TYPICAL EARLY SEPTEMBER WEATHER: Today’s weather is just what you expect at the tail end of summer and the beginning of fall. Warm and humid, a partly sunny sky, and a few spots getting a shower or thunderstorm. One storm formed right over downtown Birmingham early this afternoon producing very heavy rain over a small area, along with lots of lightning and thunder. Go a few miles in any direction and the pavement is bone dry.
The better coverage of scattered showers and storms is up north over the Tennessee Valley, along an outflow boundary created by last night’s storms over Tennessee. All of the showers and storms should fade from the radar screens late tonight.
REST OF THE WEEK: Still looks like more of the same through Friday. No major upper troughs, surface fronts, or tropical systems around, so the daily placement and coverage of showers and storms will be determined by small scale boundaries and features that are hard to identify far in advance. Bottom line is that we will broad brush the forecast for the rest of the week with partly sunny warm days, fair nights, and the risk of widely scattered showers and storms, most likely during the afternoon and evening hours. Highs will remain in the mid to upper 80s.
WEEKEND PREVIEW: The weather most likely won’t change much on Saturday, with a mix of sun and clouds and a chance of widely scattered showers and storms. The 12Z GFS still suggests showers and storms will be more numerous Sunday as moisture deepens. The GFS keep trying to develop some type of surface trough, or even a closed low, in the western Gulf this weekend; we will have to keep an eye on that.
The latest GFS run is now drier for Monday and Tuesday of next week, but for now we will maintain some risk of scattered showers and storms due to inconsistent model output.
VOODOO LAND: Watch the Weather Xtreme video and you will see the GFS shows a nice long wave upper trough over the eastern U.S. around September 24, which could bring some really cool air down here if correct. I say bring it on.
TROPICS: Tropical Storm Fred will meander out over the open water of the East Atlantic for a while, and is no threat to land. The low just off the North Carolina coast still isn’t a classic tropical system, but is bringing some wind and rain to that part of the world. Seems like it is blocked to the north, so it might just hang around for a while. The Gulf of Mexico, for now, remains quiet.
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I had a great time today seeing the senior adults at Hopewell Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa… thanks for the lunch and for the BIG cookie. Look for the next Weather Xtreme video here by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow…..
