Extreme weather lately

Today is February 20. So far this year, we’ve seen 2 snow events in Alabama (a light one in north Alabama on Jan 16 and a heavier one from BHM south on Jan 19). We also had a light icing event last week. We’ve also had a strong cold front with winds up to 65 mph that downed trees and powerlines, and three tornado outbreaks (Jan 10, Feb 6, and Feb 17).

Temperatures in BHM have ranged from 13 to 75, and temperatures in Alabama have ranged from 5 in Oneonta on January 3, to 82 in Magnolia on February 5.

We are in an active weather pattern. One way to look at this is in the jet stream winds aloft. The average jet stream from January 1 through February 15 is shown below. There has, overall, been an active SW jet stream over the central U.S., bringing disturbances into Alabama. Some have brought snow, some have brought severe storms, and some have just brought in cold air.

(NOAA)

As long as this pattern continues, the weather will stay active around here. Another surge of Arctic air is moving into the northern U.S. this morning. It is in the -20s over a large part of Minnesota and North Dakota early this morning, with -31 at 3 am at Debs, MN. Take a look at expected temperatures across the country at 6 am.

These temperature contrasts set up stronger upper-level winds and disturbances.

It now looks like we could deal with our next severe weather threat on Friday. The models predict dewpoints in the 60s to reach BHM again by Friday. The wind fields do not look as “in phase” with the instability right now as the last one, but that could change.

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