Wet and Warm for Weekend, Cold Does Return

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The warm but wet weather pattern sticks with us for a few more days – at least through the weekend – but the signs are pretty clear that we will be seeing a shift in the pattern that will bring us back to the reality of winter.

While the upper air pattern remains dominated by a trough to our west, that trough edges closer Sunday and Monday, enough to bring the stationary front that has been lingering to our northwest into the area. We are setting up for a major contrast in temperatures across Alabama with temperatures in the 60s or even lower 70s in the southeast sections with highs only in the 40s for the northwest sections. So for much of Central Alabama, we are expecting temperatures to drop significantly on Monday and Tuesday as the front slowly progresses through the area with the slow approach of the upper trough.

But finally the upper trough will come by us on Wednesday which will finally give the boot to the frontal system that sits just to the northwest of US today. This will shift the upper flow dramatically from a moist southwesterly flow today to a northwesterly flow on Wednesday. But it will also mean a clearing sky so we get some sunshine to go with those much colder temperatures.

And actually the temperatures will not be especially cold with reference to our average temperatures for the middle of January. But those temperatures will seem dramatically colder since we are as much as 20 degrees above seasonal averages. So the change is pretty significant.

The surface high moves across the area through the end of the upcoming week, as we enter another period of model disagreement. The GFS suggests we stay dry into next weekend, but the European has a different solution with a surface low in the Gulf bringing another period of wet weather. So forecast confidence beyond Thursday is fairly low at the moment.

SPC outlooking an area for severe thunderstorms primarily over Arkansas for Day 1 with no areas of severe weather expected for Days 2 and 3. The severe weather threat is for damaging wind with isolated tornadoes a possibility. The severe weather threat should diminish into the evening as lapse rates decrease. And the current severe weather outlook for the medium range into Days 4 to 8 seems to be very low.

Rainfall has been fairly light so far even with several days of wet weather. It appears that the next 5 days will see rainfall amounts of 1 to 2 inches for most areas giving us a nice wet start to the rainfall for 2013.

In the long range, aka voodoo country, the screaming message is that we stay coolish – no real extremes – but we see another wet system toward the end of January.

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Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather