It looks to be a rainy and possibly a stormy end to the month of January. The HPC has painted another 2" plus amounts for north and central Alabama over the next 5 days and this total does not include the system on Sunday. With the system on Wednesday and into Thursday we are looking at mainly a heavy rain event but we could hear a few rumbles of thunder mixed in as well. The lack of any surface based instability will keep our Thunderstorm threat to a minimum. Although the SPC has the far SW corner of Alabama in a Slight Risk for then mainly down on the Gulf Coast. It is now looking like I might have to dust of my chase gear a little early this season. The system that will impact us on Sunday looks very interesting as it has also caught the folks over at the SPCs attention as well. They have the southern 2/3 of Alabama in a severe weather risk right now at a 30% probability of severe weather from 25 miles of any given point. It looks to be a line around the Cullman-Blount County lines over to Walker and Tuscaloosa Counties to the south right now. This will be up dated later I am sure. A squall line will sweep in from the west on Sunday as the low pressure moves just to our north and drags the front behind it. This will be our first real severe weather threat of the new year so it will be watched closely. Stay tuned for more info.
These early severe threats need to be monitored closely, as we learned in 2008 with the super-tuesday outbreak. There will be lots of shear with the system coming through Sunday, and at this point, looks to be more of a wind threat in my eyes, but that can change, depending on the track of the low and the position of the jet.
ReplyDeleteWe also have to look at how much intrusion the cold air makes into the gulf from the mid-week system as well, as that could put a dampener on the severe threat if it over-performs the model guidance.
Yeah I agree it will need to be watched very closely. Even without alot of CAPE if the helicity values are high enough we could see a few tornado warnings from that to. It will be fine tuned by sometime Thursday or Friday.
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