Nothing New – Just Plain Hot

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Okay, so I forgot that James Spann was going to be on vacation for the latter part of this week!! I’m still suffering heat shock from returning to Central Alabama from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where temperatures were fantastically great with highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s!

Look for some really hot weather for today and tomorrow with only a very small possibility for a shower. But hold on because there is some sign of changes on the way. As we get into the Friday and the weekend, the upper air pattern begins to mutate just a bit with the upper ridge sliding ever so slightly westward in response to several weak short waves moving across the top of the ridge. By Saturday and Sunday we see a trough begin to set up over the eastern half of the country. This should help to increase showers across the Southeast as well as bring temperatures down as the upper air flow goes more northwesterly. I do not expect a full air mass change, but even 3 to 7 degrees in highs and lows would bring us back to climatological values for early August.

Complicating the overall picture will be Emily. As James noted below, the NHC track for Emily is into the Southwest Atlantic recurving offshore from Florida and the Southeast US coast. Emily continues to struggle getting her act together. Convection is removed from the main center and she is coming up on Hispaniola. This means that any intensification is likely to be slow to occur as the circulation begins to interact with the high terrain of Hispaniola. Future track concerns me since the computer model guidance as once again shown a shift more to the west. Emily seems to have stayed on a more westward track than forecasts have shown, so I am concerned that small changes now could result in a storm coming into the eastern Gulf. The GFS shows recurvature, but with a somewhat weak pressure pattern in the area ahead of Emily, we’ll have to sit back and watch for now.

Longer range forecasts show the troughiness to stay over the eastern US but by the middle of August the ridge builds back across the southern tier of the US, a pattern we have certainly seen happen over and over this summer. So I do not think we are out of the woods – or the heat – just yet.

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Sorry to have been a bit late this morning. I somehow managed to forget that James was heading out on vacation for the end of this week. I expect to have the next Weather Xtreme Video posted by 8 am or so on Thursday morning. Godspeed.

-Brian-

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Category: Alabama's Weather