A Mid-Morning Check On Our Weather Situation

As of 8:55 am, we continue to have showers and a few embedded thunderstorms over the northern parts of Central Alabama and up into North Alabama, along with some scattered shower activity down in the southern parts of Central Alabama. No severe weather at this juncture, but heavy rain is falling with some of the storms in the northern parts of the area.

If you have been outside, you can tell it is quite warm and muggy for this time of the day and for this time of the year. Temperatures were in the 60s across the area with dewpoints nearly equalling the actual temperature. Birmingham was at 66 degrees with a 63-degree dewpoint. Selma and Tuscaloosa were tied as the warm spots at 68 degrees while Cullman was the cool spot at 62 degrees.

At this point, surface-based instability values are low across all of Central Alabama, but we are starting to see a small area located mainly of much of Walker County and into western parts of Jefferson County starting to exceed 500 J/kg. Wind shear values have already reached speeds that would be sufficient for strong storm development, but at this point, we are staying well away from severe criteria with any of these storms.

A Slight Risk for severe storms continues for much of North/Central Alabama through the remainder of the day and through the overnight hours. Only the eastern parts of the area remain in a Marginal Risk. As you can see, the window for stronger to severe storms will start around 3:00 pm this afternoon with storms potentially not leaving the southeastern parts of the area until around or just after 8:00 am Thursday.

The main threats will be from a few tornadoes and damaging winds up to 60 MPH. There is also a smaller threat of hail up to 1-inch in diameter with any severe storm during this event.

Flash Flood Watches continue for much of the eastern two-thirds of the area through 6:00 pm Thursday evening as we could see rainfall amounts surpassing 2-3 inches across much of the area, with localized amounts up to and exceeding 6 inches possible.

We’ll continue to keep you updated throughout the event. Be prepared and stay weather aware.

Category: Alabama's Weather, ALL POSTS, Severe Weather