Lots Of Cold Air Still Coming Our Way!

It looks like plenty of cold air will pour into Alabama starting this weekend, and hang around for at least a week to 10 days, continuing our colder-than-normal pattern. A strong cold front will come in late Friday, with some rain and maybe a few thunderstorms ahead of it. Behind this front, the models (NOGAPS, GFS, European, Canadian) are in good agreement that very cold air will come in Saturday and Sunday. If you’re heading to Auburn or Tuscaloosa this week, prepare with very warm clothes. Highs Saturday may stay in the 40s north of I-59, and only reach the mid 50s in Auburn, depending on how many low clouds stay around. Winds of 15-25 mph will place wind chills in the 30s at both games. The GFS even calls for a few snow flurries over north Alabama Saturday, but that may be a stretch.

Looks like additonal cold fronts will re-inforce the cold air over Alabama next week, with multiple cold days likely. This is an animation of the GFS Ensemble (the average of several different model runs, to smooth out wild runs) of 850 mb temperature (near 4,000 feet) every 12 hours over the next 2 weeks. The colors indicate whether these temperatures are above or below normal, with green generally above normal and blue below normal. The 850 mb temperature correlates pretty well with the surface temperatures, at least in comparison to normal. Notice how we remain below normal most of the period after Friday.

(Click on the picture for a larger version and the animation).

As JB Elliott discussed last night on Weatherbrains, a very large part of north America, from the northern continental U. S. into Canada and Alaska, is already snow covered here in early November. This, in addition to the cool summer in Alaska and relatively cool summer here (only 8 days with high temperatures in BHM 95 degrees or above, compared to an average of 16 days), the late cool weather here (40s in mid May), are just some of the reasons JB and I have been forecasting a cold, snowy winter since September (JB predicts 6″ of snow, I predict our first temperatures of zero since 1985). We still are somewhat on target, with the fall coming in very cold. Then again, it could be a cold fall, then be a warm January. We’ll see.

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