A Quieter Day in Central Alabama

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It was a dark and stormy night – just love using that phrase! And indeed it was. Many locations across North and Central Alabama saw between 1 and 2 inches of rain coming from the numerous showers and thunderstorms that traversed the state between sunset yesterday and sunrise this morning. One last cluster of thunderstorms was approaching Selma in Dallas County at this writing. And with the atmosphere worked over a good bit plus a little less moisture as seen in precipitable water values, it would appear that we should see a day or two of dry weather.

The upper atmospheric pattern does not change much for the next seven days as the trough over the eastern US remains more or less in place as does the ridge to our west. The pattern is not completely static in that the ridge nudges in a little Sunday and Monday and the trough weakens a little, too, but the northwesterly flow aloft is pretty constant. While it might sound like a broken record, we will need to be vigilant on watching for thunderstorm clusters developing in the northwesterly flow over the Central Plains states and propagating to the southeast. The GFS hints at this, but it is difficult to pinpoint one of these well in the next week.

The result for us is that we should be dry today with some chance of showers across South Alabama. The dry weather should stick with us on Friday, too, and then we see moisture values come back up with a return to daily chances for showers and thunderstorms driven primarily by daily heating. And it looks like August will start on a warm note – not a hot note, thank goodness – with highs primarily in the lower 90s, so there is still no extreme heat.

Beach goers will have a wetter day today with numerous showers and thunderstorms. Showers will be widely spaced primarily during the afternoon again on Friday and into the weekend. Look for highs around 90 with 2 to 4 hours of sunshine today and 6 to 8 hours on Friday.

Tropics are quiet. Most of the severe weather risk remains in the Central Plains states for the next three days with some threat along the eastern seaboard of the US on Day 1.

Looking out into voodoo, there is not sign to any big change in the overall weather pattern with the western ridge and the eastern trough remaining in place with some oscillation in the strength of these features.

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Rainfall varies quite a bit in thunderstorm situations, so I hope you got a good shot of nature’s water overnight. My rain gauge missed most of it yesterday, but there was 1.15 inches in the gauge this morning. Next video should be here by 8 am or so on Friday morning. Godspeed.

-Brian-

Category: Alabama's Weather