Unsettled Weather Continues

Radar clear once again this morning with just a few clouds lingering in the Alabama sky from storms last night. Most locations in Central Alabama were in the lower 70s this morning, and with fairly good amounts of sunshine this morning we should see the afternoon highs climb into the range of 87 to 92 depending in part on how quickly storms form this afternoon. Birmingham hit 92 yesterday before storms formed and capped temperatures.

The overall pattern remains somewhat unsettled. The stalled frontal boundary still lingered across South Alabama this morning, while at 500 millibars a strong upper ridge was located just to the north of state. That weak disturbance that has been moving westward along the Gulf Coast continued to bring active storms over Louisiana and Texas Gulf Coast areas.

The upper ridge will continue to pull back toward the west through the middle of the week. A northerly upper flow on Tuesday could spell some relief in the unsettled pattern with some lower precipitable water values pushing into the state from the north.

But that respite from the likelihood of showers and storms will be short-lived as precipitable water values come right back up as the eastern side of the upper ridge pushes back into the Southeast US on Thursday and Friday and into next weekend. GFS MOS guidance keeps the probability of precipitation in the 20 to 30 percent range, but I think we could see those values somewhat higher with precipitable water values climbing back up toward the 2-inch mark. With the center of the ridge well to our northwest, though, we should stay out of high heat with afternoon highs for the latter half of the week in the lower 90s.

Rainfall values will continue to be quite varied from day-to-day, but over the next week those folks who gets storms could see amounts of three-quarters to one and a half inches of rain. Rainfall values will be the best generally across the southern two-thirds of the state where the impact of the dissipating front will be the best creating a northeast to southwest gradient in the rainfall amounts.

Looking out into voodoo country, the GFS was pretty bullish with the upper ridge. We start out with the ridge centered well west of us on July 17th, but the GFS builds a very strong ridge – over 600 decameters – into the Southeast US by the 21st of July and maintain it through the 23rd of July. Precipitable water values remain high with some day-to-day variations, so scattered showers will be possible every day, but we could see some pretty good heat with the potential for dangerous heat index values.

The Atlantic tropical basin remained active. Beryl was downgraded to a tropical storm yesterday morning and is expected to continue to decrease in strength as it moves into the eastern Caribbean. Tropical Depression Three became Tropical Storm Chris this morning. Chris is expected to continue to meander just offshore from the North Carolina coast into the first of the upcoming week before being picked up by the westerlies and moving out to sea as it becomes a hurricane.

Beach Forecast: Click here to see the AlabamaWx Beach Forecast Center page.

WeatherBrains: Don’t forget you can listen to our weekly 90 minute netcast anytime on the web, or on iTunes. This is the show all about weather featuring many familiar voices, including our meteorologists here at ABC 33/40.

James Spann will have the next Weather Xtreme Video first thing on Monday morning. Enjoy your week and Godspeed.

-Brian-

Tags: ANC

Category: Alabama's Weather, ALL POSTS, Weather Xtreme Videos