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Looks like some of the warmest weather so far this year is ahead for Alabama…
Temperatures will rise into the mid 80s tomorrow afternoon, possibly approaching 90 over the western side of the state. The weather will remain dry, although a few scattered clouds will develop along with a gusty south wind. The warmest temperature so far this year at Birmingham is 84 (recorded on both April 22 and 23)… we will be very close to that tomorrow afternoon.
THURSDAY: The day still looks rather volatile. Both the NAM and GFS show surface based CAPES between 1,000 and 1,500 j/kg, and those might be a bit too low if the sun breaks out for any length of time. And, projecting helicity values look favorable for a few rotating updrafts. The upper trough will be slowly weakening, and there isn’t a well defined surface boundary to really back the low level winds (unless a a mesoscale boundary shows up, which might happen), so hopefully it won’t be a “red letter day”, but you sure have to watch any setup like this in early May in Alabama. The best chance of strong to severe storms will be in the 2:00 to 10:00 p.m. time frame.
Rainfall amounts of one-half to one inch seem likely; the 12Z NAM is printing 0.82″ for Birmingham, which sounds right.
FRIDAY AND THE WEEKEND: Drier air will flow into Alabama Friday, and we can just about take out the chance of rain based on the 12Z model runs. The day will really be warm; in fact we are talking highs in the 86 to 90 degree range; most likely the warmest day so far this year.
I think we had still better mention some risk of widely scattered showers Saturday, but much of the day should be dry with a warm front lifting north of Alabama during the day. Otherwise, the day will be warm and muggy with a high in the upper 80s again.
Showers and thunderstorms will return on Sunday with the next front. The 12Z GFS isn’t as robust with the upper trough, but we really need to get Thursday’s system out of here before we can focus too much on Sunday.
LONG RANGE: The GFS is showing a nice upper trough and an associated chance of showers and storms around the middle of next week (May 14). Then, a big upper vortex develops over the eastern half of the nation, which should keep us unsettled and cooler than average in the May 16-17 time frame, if the model is correct.
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I enjoyed speaking to the U.S. Postal Customer Council today…. nice crowd and a nice lunch! I will have the next Weather Xtreme video posted here by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow….
