The Monday afternoon Weather Xtreme Video is available on the player below, and on iTunes:
Check out the post below this one from J.B. on the amazing cold up in Canada. The cold air is dropping into Montana; as I write this Cutbank, MT reports eight degrees below zero with a northwest wind of 17 mph, making the wind chill index a bone chilling 31 degrees below zero. Will the gates to the Yukon open to Alabama later in the week? That is the big question.
SHORT TERM: Moisture levels will increase through mid-week, which will mean cloudy periods and warmer nights. I guess you can’t rule out a shower somewhere tomorrow or Wednesday, but the chance of getting wet is so small it is barely worth a mention in the forecast. Even much of the day Thursday should be dry. All three days we expect afternoon highs somewhere between 68 and 72 degrees. Not bad for late November in Alabama.
THE FRONT: The cold front will slowly ease into Alabama late Thursday night; dropping slowly southward through the night and on Friday. It still looks like our main window for strong storms will come from about midnight Thursday night through 12 noon on Friday. SPC has all of Alabama in a severe weather risk in their day 4-8 outlook, but from here the chance of a big severe weather event looks relatively small with marginal instability. Rainfall amounts of 1/2 to one inch seem likely during those 12 hours as the showers and storms move through.
FRIDAY: No real change in our thinking since the early morning blog post. I think Muscle Shoals hovers in the 31 to 37 degree range all day with an icy north wind, but places like Sylacauga, Lineville, and Wedowee might be close to 60 degrees at the lunch hour with showers and storms. Temperatures will go the wrong way; in the Birmingham metro we should fall from near 60 Friday morning into the 30s by mid to late afternoon. The cold air will be only one to two thousand feet deep when it reaches us, so you have to reject the MOS guidance. It won’t understand cold air at the surface that shallow.
Any snow flurries Friday should be limited to the northwest corner of the state in the deeper cold air. And, the front will probably hang up somewhere south of Montgomery as it becomes parallel to the upper air winds. The cold air will only seep into Alabama, and the front will just run out of gas in South Alabama.
SATURDAY-SUNDAY: Cool and dry weather is the story for the weekend; there will be a sharp temperature gradient from north to south; places like Dothan and Geneva might stay in the 70s, while the northern half will see highs in the 50s.
NEXT WEEK: The 12Z GFS is on to the idea of more brutally cold air dropping southward into the U.S. next week; it has a whopper of a 1052 mb high over the southeast corner of Wyoming by Thursday December 7. Some of that cold air moves into Alabama by the end of the week (December 8-9). I would not want to be in Montana or North Dakota during the next 10 days; the cold will be harsh and potentially life threatening up there.
I will have the next Weather Xtreme video posted by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow… enjoy your Monday evening!
