Brrr

The cold air continues to pour into Alabama this evening. Temperatures are already several degrees colder than they were at this time last night, with mid 20s at 9 pm over most of central Alabama (25 BHM, 28 TCL, 25 ANB, 23 GAD), with some locations already in the teens in north Alabama (17 in Gurley, 18 in Section, 19 in Madison and Cullman). The freezing line is all the way to Evergreen and Enterprise in south Alabama.

Northerly winds will continue to flow around the big pressure gradient from high to our NW and low to our NE. This will allow the cold air to slowly get colder over the next 48 hours or so. There are several competing factors here as cold air rushes south from the Great lakes and Upper Midwest, where temperatures are now mainly between 0 and -20, with the 0 line now approaching St. Louis and Indianapolis. As the air flows south of the snow pack and over Kentucky and Tennessee, the sunshine during the day adds some heat to it, and the ground does also. Some of the heat is radiated away into space too. The thing is, as the ground becomes colder (4 inch soil temperatures in Alabama have dropped more than 4 degrees since yesterday), the ground modifies the cold air less. And, we could get a little cloud cover tomorrow.

So, BHM may struggle to reach 34 tomorrow, and 30 on Monday. Lows by tomorrow morning should mainly be near 20 in central Alabama, with colder north Alabama locations 10 to 15.

By the way, the snow on radar in Missouri and northern Arkansas is associated with an upper-level disturbance. The air over Alabama right now is very dry, as shown on the balloon data from NWS at 6 pm. So, outside of a flurry, no snow here tomorrow.

The computer models are running now for late next week, so we should have a new update on the possibility of snow before midnight. Remember, it is still 5 days away and we don’t need to get too caught up in changes from one model run to the next. Right now and at least through early in the week, the dangerously cold air is the story.

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