Stormy Saturday

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Good morning, Weather Fans. And welcome to the racing storm track of the Southeast. I say this in jest since I’ve recorded rain everyday for the last five days with a total rainfall of 2.22″ – and it sure looks like my gauge will see some more rain today.

A front was situated just north and west of us running from near Lexington, KY, to near Little Rock, AR. The GFS model continues to show the front moving through Central Alabama today and tonight. This should be a strong focus for showers and thunderstorms, some of which may be strong with heavy downpours likely. Our air mass is just so wet with precipitable water values running close to 2 inches. I noted the Birmingham airport had 1.44″ of rain in a storms yesterday which just 5 miles away in downtown Birmingham the rain total was about half that. Just shows the localized nature of convective weather.

Clouds and showers will help to keep temperatures down and humidity values up. Expect rainfall totals to run into the 1 to 2 inch range though not everyone is going to get that much.

The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) keeps the areas of slight risk over portions of the Central Plains states today and Sunday shifting it further east on Monday. We could see strong storms today but we are not outlooked for a risk due to the very isolated nature of the storms and the marginal nature of any severe weather threat.

The front shifts south Sunday allowing slightly drier air – dew points should drop about 5 degrees – to make it into Central Alabama. This should drastically reduce the chances for showers Sunday afternoon.

I’m a little less confident in the forecast for early next week but it looks like we start the week dry. A trough establishes itself over the Eastern half of the country keeps us under a northwesterly flow. This should mean temperatures near seasonal values and low chances for showers. However, I for one am very leery of northwesterly flow regimes. They tend to be favorable for the development of mesoscale convective complexes or MCCs which are large thunderstorm clusters that can travel hundreds of miles and bring some nasty weather with them. Not to mention busting perfectly good forecasts. So I’ll be keeping a wary eye for such development.

Longer range outlooks suggest the ridge will re-establish itself over the eastern US toward the latter part of June returning us to a typical summertime weather pattern.

The tropics remain quiet with no signs of much happening there.

This is City Stages weekend, so I’m staffing the Weather Center at Park Place Towers to support the operation of our world class music festival. Hard to believe it is my 18th year of doing this as City Stages celebrates its 20th anniversary. Wow, time flies.

I expect to have another Weather Xtreme Video posted by 8 am tomorrow morning. I hope you have a great weekend. Be safe in what ever weather affects you today. God bless.

-Brian-

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