Warm, Hazy Conditions Continue

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It is certainly nice to see the look on the radar this morning with scattered showers and patches of light rain occurring here and there. This is certainly not a drought buster, but any rain is welcome. Rainfall amounts have been light and I really don’t expect to see any significant rain amounts today. The weak upper trough responsible for aiding in the development of these showers moves away – I was hoping it would stick around and give us several days of wetter weather, but it looks like it won’t.

With the departure of the weakness in the 500 millibar flow, we come back to an air mass shower situation with isolated showers possible during the afternoon hours along with highs in the mid and upper 80s. And that scenarios stays with us to the beginning of next week.

A nice closed low drops a bit further south from the Dakotas with the promise of a fairly deep trough over the eastern half of the country by Monday. That trough will help to drag a weak front into Central Alabama on Monday. And that should help to shave off a few degrees on the high temperatures as we see highs drop back about 5 degrees.

Tropically, things remain interesting. June 1, tomorrow, marks the beginning of the 2007 hurricane season, and I know you’ve seen all the dire predictions on the number of storms for the year. The GFS is still showing a lot of jitteriness in the Gulf and western Caribbean. A closed surface low develops Saturday across South Florida and moves off into the Atlantic. If that does develop, the weak low should bring a fairly significant rainfall episode to South Florida which will be very beneficial to them, too.

This tropical thing is certainly generating a lot of interest, but there is a good deal of uncertainty as the models differ in its future course. The European takes the surface low more into Central Florida while the NAM brings it further west into Northwest Florida. I think the South/Central Florida solution looks about right. Naturally, I would like to see that weak low come right up into Alabama so we could benefit from a good rain – but wanting is not a scientific approach. Tropical systems always present interesting forecast challenges because of the generally weak environments in which the systems are embedded. But I know I’ll be watching the situation to see how it evolves.

James Spann is taking a few days off, and I’ll try to be back tomorrow morning with another Blog video map discussion. I say try since I will be in Cleveland for a workshop, and I never know if everything will come together for the video on the road. I’m not the road warrior that Bill Murray is, so every trip becomes a real adventure. But I’m going to give it the old college try.

-Brian-

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