A Quick Look At Our Weather Situation At 9:00AM

RADAR CHECK
At the 9:00AM hour across North/Central Alabama, all is quiet at the moment. We have partly to mostly cloudy skies across the area, and radar is looking dry for now. Of course that will not be the situation in a few hours, as we are expected to have showers and thunderstorms developing, and moving across the area. Temperatures at this point are currently in the mid 60s to the lower 70s across the area.

LATEST FROM STORM PREDICTION CENTER
The latest update from the SPC has the northwest corner of the state in an enhanced risk for severe storms throughout the day, with a good portion of the northern half of the state in a slight risk, and a marginal risk stretching all the way out to Mobile and Baldwin counties to Greenville and Montgomery and out to east and northeastern Alabama.

LATEST THINKING
A broad upper-level trough is moving eastward and closer to the state, with convective storms expected to develop out ahead of the front during the early afternoon hours. We will have plenty of dry air aloft, along with CAPE values in the 1000-2000 J/kg range and with 0-6 km shear around 35-45 knots. Storms possibly could be in the form of supercells and clusters. Main threats for today will be from damaging winds and large hail. The tornado threat will be very low, and flooding should not be an issue as only 1 inch of rain or less is expected.

TIMING
The main risk for strong to severe storms across the area today will be from roughly 3:00PM until 9:00PM this evening. With the cold front lagging and a low-level jet in place, more showers and storms are possible after that during the late evening and overnight hours, but these will not be severe.

WORD OF ADVICE
Be sure to be in a position to hear severe weather watches and warnings throughout the day if they are needed. Stay tuned to the Alabama Wx Weather Blog throughout the day for regular updates. Have your NOAA Weather Radio handy and your smart phone charged and nearby.

HEADS UP FOR POSSIBLE SEVERE WEATHER ON THURSDAY
Our next system that will move across the area will be on Thursday afternoon and Thursday night, and the SPC already has much of the state defined in a severe weather risk on their “Day 4” outlook. The synoptic pattern looks favorable for strong to severe storms as of now, but we need to get through today’s event before focusing on Thursday.

Tags: ANC

Category: ALL POSTS, Severe Weather