Nice Cool Down

Due to travel back to Central Alabama, there will not be a Weather Xtreme Video today. I plan to have one on Sunday morning.

The week ended on a wet and stormy note, but it looks like we should be seeing some cooler weather than we’ve seen for the last week or so. And that will feel very nice.

For today we are still dealing with the closed low centered over the western Ohio Valley this morning. A surface low over Ohio was dragging a slow moving cold front across Georgia and the Gulf Coast. Until the trough axis moves by later in the day, we still could see some isolated thunderstorms with the greatest threat across the northeast quadrant of Alabama. Thunderstorms are likely to develop in Middle Tennessee associated with the pocket of cold air associated with the upper closed low. Lapse rates and temperature profile suggest the greatest threat will be marginally severe hail and the potential for damaging wind gusts. The main severe weather threat as outlined by a slight risk area by SPC is centered over the Carolinas.

It’s interesting to note that the ECMWF forecast last weekend actually seems to have had the best solution for what this closed low has done.

The closed low moves into the Carolinas on Sunday bringing a nice northwesterly flow into Alabama with lowered dew points and plenty of sunshine with highs in the middle 70s Sunday and upper 70s Monday.

A ridge builds into the eastern US from the Central Plains on Monday and Tuesday keeping us in great weather with a gradual warming trend as highs climb into the lower 80s for much of the upcoming week. While the highs will be warm, the lows will continue to fall back into the 50s which when combined with somewhat lower humidity will make the mornings feel coolish.

Wednesday a strong trough moving through the westerlies will move across the ridge dampening it down and dragging a front into the area by Friday. This will bring back the possibility of showers on Friday. There is an outside chance we might see a small chance for showers on Thursday, but I’d prefer to keep the forecast dry for now until we see how the timing of this system works out as we get closed to the latter part of the week.

The ridge holds fairly strong for us into the weekend, but a trough coming out of the Southwest US combined with the frontal boundary in our area is likely to lead to increased rain chances as we head into Saturday and Sunday. We are likely to see showers aided by afternoon heating as opposed to bigger rain event we just saw. A big question for now will be the overall timing of this feature coming out of the Southwest US. It is worth noting that the GFS and ECMWF are in good agreement on the overall pattern with only a small difference in the actual location of the trough – middle Texas for the GFS and East Texas for the ECMWF. This certainly adds something to the confidence level as opposed to the huge model differences we saw last weekend.

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Six days on the Alabama Gulf coast is coming to an end today! Weather has been nice with a nice variety from warm to cool and dry to wet. Thunderstorms did not cooperate with an amateur photographer who really wanted an opportunity to get some lightning shots. Oh, well, maybe another time. I hope you enjoy the day. I expect to post a full video tomorrow morning by 8 am or so. Godspeed.

-Brian-

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Category: Alabama's Weather