Beautiful Today; Severe Storms Possible Wednesday

CHILLY START: Some of the colder pockets are down in the 30s across North Alabama early this morning, but we warm nicely into the low 70s this afternoon with a good supply of sunshine. The weather won’t be as windy today as the pressure gradient will relax a good bit. Tomorrow will be warmer; the sky partly to mostly sunny with a high between 77 and 82.

STORMS RETURN WEDNESDAY: SPC has defined a “marginal risk” (level 1/5) of severe thunderstorms for all of Alabama south of a line from Winfield to Vinemont to Fort Payne…

There are more questions about Wednesday than answers at this point; the large scale features include a deep surface low over the Great Lakes with a trailing cold front moving into Alabama. Some model guidance suggests there will be a round of rain and storms early in the day, followed by more thunderstorms along the cold front during the afternoon hours. As has been the case much of the severe weather season, the magnitude of the severe weather threat all depends on how the air recovers from the morning round of storms.

If storms do develop during the afternoon, and if sufficient instability is achieved, then storms Wednesday afternoon will be capable of producing hail and strong winds. A couple of isolated tornadoes can’t be ruled out. We will be much more specific about the threat later today and tomorrow. Rain amounts Wednesday should be around one inch for most communities, and the high will be in the 70s.

THURSDAY/FRIDAY: Dry weather is the story on these two days; expect a good supply of sunshine with low 70s Thursday, and upper 70s Friday.

THE ALABAMA WEEKEND: As May arrives, so does early season heat. The sky will be partly to mostly sunny Saturday and Sunday with highs in the low to mid 80s. It will be the warmest weekend so far this year for our state and the Deep South. A sign summer is getting close.

NEXT WEEK: Warm, dry weather continues for the first half of the week with highs in the 80s; next chance of showers will come by Wednesday or Thursday. See the Weather Xtreme video for maps, graphics, and more details.

NINE YEARS AGO TODAY: I still don’t have the words to describe the generational tornado outbreak of April 27, 2011. In Alabama, 62 tornadoes touched down. A total of 252 were killed, over one thousand more injured. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Bragg is a gifted writer, and his words in Southern Living written after that horrible day perhaps are appropriate:

“Where the awful winds bore down, massive oaks, 100 years old, were shoved over like stems of grass, and great pines, as big around as 55-gallon drums, snapped like sticks. Church sanctuaries, built on the Rock of Ages, tumbled into random piles of brick. Houses, echoing with the footfalls of generations, came apart, and blew away like paper. Whole communities, carefully planned, splintered into chaos. Restaurants and supermarkets, gas stations and corner stores, all disintegrated, glass storefronts scattered like diamonds on black asphalt. It was as if the very curve of the Earth was altered, horizons erased altogether, the landscape so ruined and unfamiliar that those who ran from this thing, some of them, could not find their way home.

We are accustomed to storms, here where the cool air drifts south to collide with the warm, rising damp from the Gulf, where black clouds roil and spin and unleash hell on Earth. But this was different, a gothic monster off the scale of our experience and even our imagination, a thing of freakish size and power that tore through state after state and heart after Southern heart, killing hundreds, hurting thousands, even affecting, perhaps forever, how we look at the sky.”

We have learned much over the last nine years about the event; involving both physical science and social science. We must take the lessons learned to help mitigate loss of life during every severe weather event. Days like April 27, 2011 come along in Alabama once about every 40 years, but we will be better even on “routine” severe weather days thanks to what we know now.

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Look for the next Weather Xtreme video here by 4:00 this afternoon… enjoy the day!

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