Warm/Humid but Turning Colder

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Rather foggy across much of Alabama this morning, so if you have early morning activities, keep the fog in mind and leave a little earlier so you don’t have to hurry with the visibilities much reduced in spots. It’s also going to remain mild for the weekend before turning much colder on Tuesday.

We’ll remain mild today and Sunday with a surface high pressure center situated off to our east allowing the Gulf to open wide and bring lots of moisture northward to our area. You can see that this morning with the fog and I expect to see fog again on Sunday morning. Along with the fog we have some isolated showers on radar but they are very spotty. With the front off to the northwest and a plentiful supply of moisture, isolated showers will be possible until the main weather event arrives Monday with the front.

The upper air pattern continues to sharpen up with the substantial trough in the Central US. This will bring a cold front into and through the Southeast US on Monday with that being our main day for rain and thunderstorms. There is a marginal potential for severe weather with this system as instability values climb with CAPE numbers getting into the 500 to 700 jg/km range. Along with plenty of low level moisture as seen with dew points in the 60s, we’ll be watching for the possibility of severe weather, but it does not appear to be a widespread significant event that is shaping up. Wind profiles also suggest that damaging wind will be the primary threat if we see severe weather.

The front moves on through Tuesday producing a big cool down for us. Tuesday is one of those days with strong cold advection, so we might not see our temperatures get out of the 40s. But don’t be too worried, while we’ll stay pretty chilly on Wednesday the upper air pattern changes pretty quickly Wednesday into Thursday allowing a rapid warm up with highs back to near 60s by Thursday and Friday, a tad above seasonal highs. But the flow is pretty fast, so we see another trough coming out of the southern Rockies on Friday that promises to drag another cold front into the area Saturday with reasonably good rain potential again.

But the flow is very progressive (fast), so while we see rain Saturday it should move through quickly with a cooler but drier day for Sunday. Confidence in the forecast for next weekend is fairly high with good agreement on that next weather system between the GFS and the European models.

Looking out into voodoo, the GFS is suggesting a real roller coaster ride with another shot at rain and cold weather on the 20th but another quick warm up with a substantial ridge by the 23rd suggesting that Christmas might be mild. But that is definitely into voodoo country.

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Got to head out this morning for the Festival of Three Kings at my church. We are hosting about 75 children through Shelby County Human Services with a Christmas celebration including games, a visit with Santa, and lots of goodies. I’ll be wearing a red suit! I hope you have a great weekend and Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather