Noon Update: Mainly Cloudy Thursday, Sunshine Returns Friday
For your Thursday, the sky will be mostly cloudy sky with a small chance of showers for the southern half of the state. The better rain chances will be south of I-85 and east of I-65 in the southeastern parts of the area. The rest of Central Alabama will remain dry. It won’t be much warmer at all as afternoon highs will be in the mid to upper 40s throughout the area. Tonight will be cold and continue to feature more clouds to the south and temperatures in the upper 20s to the mid-30s across Central Alabama.
FRIDAY/SATURDAY: These days will be cold and dry with plenty of sunshine and highs in the upper 40s to mid 50s. Overnight will be around freezing, but once again we are dry, so no winter weather mischief.
NEW YEAR’S EVE: A deep trough digs down into the Southeast and the floodgates of the Arctic will be wide open spilling frigid air into the U.S. Our next surge of cold air arrives on Sunday when it looks like temperatures will remain in the 30s all day. With all this cold air, you start to worry about incursions of Gulf moisture. The GFS has been consistently painting a picture of a wintry mix across the Southeast for Sunday and Monday and continues to show a wintry mix of freezing rain, sleet and snow across much of the northern half of Alabama. With temperatures in the upper 20s and lower 30s, travel problems could develop. Once again, the GFS has been the wetter solution, while the European has been drier, but it still shows some moisture in place. There remains a lot of uncertainty, but I feel confident that somewhere in the Southeast will be dealing with wintry precip as 2017 ends and 2018 begins, and portions of Alabama are well in play for this mess.
BOWL GAME FORECAST: Going by the model output mentioned above, Alabama fans traveling to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl could encounter problems on I-59 and I-65 as they head toward the Big Easy. Auburn fans could have issues as well. Significant accumulations of freezing rain (>0.10 inches of ice) could affect areas all along I-59 in western Alabama and eastern Mississippi as well as along I-65 in Southwest Alabama. This is just from the latest model runs, a lot can and will change, so please stay tuned and check the blog frequently if you are heading to either game. We will have a better handle on the forecast in the coming days.
BITTERLY COLD START TO 2018: We are still expecting the coldest air so far this winter arriving on New Year’s Day. The deep trough remains in place and looking into the first two weeks of January, the trough will remain in place, meaning very cold air for Alabama. Now the models have brought temperatures up some for early next week, but still it will be cold. Highs Tuesday hold in the 30s, while 40s are possible Wednesday as both days will be mainly sunny. Beyond Wednesday, yet another surge of cold air spills south and possibly will be colder than the early week air mass, as we head from Thursday into Friday. As long as the trough remains over the East and our flow is out of the northwest, there will be nothing stopping the Arctic air from spilling south out of Canada into the U.S. And like mentioned above, with cold air in place, we have to watch any moisture return out of the Gulf as it will setup winter weather issues for Alabama. I think we will see more issues with wintry precip before the pattern changes.
Have a great day!
Ryan
