A Wet Christmas Day

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There’s a lot of activity this morning, so we have a special guest handling the Weather Xtreme Video duties for this edition. And as we’ve been forecasting, the weather turned wet for this Christmas Day. I would have been nice to have temperatures about 10 to 12 degrees colder, but alas that is not to be! Looks like the rain will continue off and on for much of the day but I do expect to see the rain gradual taper off this afternoon as this one disturbance moseys by. Clouds will hang in, though, so don’t look for any clearing until about mid-week.

The clouds will hang around on Monday, so while I do expect much of tonight and the first portion on Monday to be dry, we can’t completely rule out a little patchy rain from the clouds. As the closed low finally exits the Southwest US on Monday, a surface low in the Northwest Gulf of Mexico will move across the Southeast US on a northeast heading. This should generate another round of rain from Monday evening into Tuesday. The European model is a trifle faster than the GFS, so if the European is right we may see the end to the rain a little earlier on Tuesday. But again the clouds are expected to hang in there.

Rainfall amounts today should average around a third of an inch with the potential for 1 to 2 inches Monday night and Tuesday. Severe weather threat for Central Alabama seems minimal at the moment. There is some threat for the Gulf Coast area from Louisiana across to the Florida Panhandle, but even that threat is somewhat low at this time.

The trough is finally gone on Wednesday putting us under a weak ridge. Even with the ridge, another trough has dropped in behind the exiting trough, but I believe we won’t see any rain with this one, perhaps some clouds. But the pattern remains very fast with a near continuous string of upper level disturbances moving through the general troughiness over the eastern half of the country.

Another one dips into the Central US on Thursday and another one on Friday and yet another one on Saturday. The GFS MOS guidance puts out a 20 percent probability of rain, however, I don’t see a great deal of moisture for these troughs to act on, so for the moment I’m leaving the forecast dry for the end of the week.

Looking further afield, there still appears to be an absence of real extreme weather. The GFS is still painting a possible winter weather scenario around January 6th. The overall character and look of the scenario is different from yesterday and even appears a little more serious. The event is about a day later than what the GFS showed yesterday. But just like yesterday, the deep trough in the west returns to the picture on the 9th putting us in southwesterly flow once again. So interesting but not something I plan to issue a specific forecast on just yet!

The series of troughs does have an impact in bringing some colder air to the northern half of the eastern US. For us, the temperatures are expected to stay fairly constant in the middle and upper 50s for highs with lows in the 30s, about what you expect to see in late December.

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Merry Christmas to all and Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather