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After a gray, cloudy, gloomy, cold day yesterday the sunshine has returned in full force this morning. I have to admit that it is always nice to see the bright sunshine when you get out of bed in the morning. And I have to add that I was a trifle late getting out of bed this morning, so the sun was shining brightly. Temperatures a bit coolish with readings generally in the upper 20s and lower 30s. But after nearly flatline temperatures yesterday where we saw almost no diurnal temperature change, we should see a nice warm up today with afternoon readings well into the 50s.
Dry weather continues for us on Thursday with some moderation in the cold air. Thursday will be a day when conditions begin to come together for a strong storm sytem that may bring us chances for severe weather on Saturday. The latest GFS model run is a little slower with this system, so my confidence in the GFS solution is not as high as I would like it to be. However, the GFS solution is reasonable so I’ll stick with it at the moment. The 06Z run brings a squall line across the Mississippi River late morning on Saturday putting Alabama in a good location to combine maximum heating and the strong dynamics associated with the next storm.
The Storm Prediction Center or SPC has outlooked a sizeable portion of the Southeast US including nearly all of Alabama for severe weather in the four-to-eight day outlook. Some things that are positive for severe weather to occur include a good upper level jet with good divergence over Alabama and a very strong low level jet at 50 knots. So this is going to bear watching as we approach the last weekend of 2006.
The main weather should blast through here on Saturday but as the surface low moves off to the north-northeast we’re likely to see another cloudy, cold day on Monday with wrap around clouds and good cold air advection.
January 2nd and 3rd look dry and seasonal but moisture returns on the fourth. One of the big things to note in the longer range forecasts is that the weather pattern remains very active with a continuation of a series of storm systems. That’s a trend that I think we can be fairly sure of at this time.
I hope you enjoy the midweek and the change to warmer conditions. I’m going to prop my feet up a little after doing a bunch of fill-ins for the last week or so. Got a bunch of year end work to get caught up on. God bless.
-Brian-
