Extreme Cold for a Few Days, Snow Chances Looking on the Low End

FORECAST:

Monday (High 27, Low 10): Sunny. Lightly breezy and bitterly cold. 

Tuesday (High 30, Low 13): Partly to mostly cloudy with isolated snow showers possible. Accumulations, if any, are expected to stay light. 

Wednesday (High 34, Low 9): Sunny. Still cold. 

EXTENDED OUTLOOK:

Thursday (High 42, Low 19): Mostly sunny.

Friday (High 43, Low 24): Partly to mostly sunny.

Saturday (High 50, Low 26): Sunny.

Sunday (High 53, Low 35): Partly cloudy with a 20% chance of showers. 

PRONÓSTICO:

Lunes (Máxima 27, Mínima 10): Soleado. Ventoso y muy frío.

Martes (Máxima 30, Mínima 13): Parcialmente nublado con posibilidad de chubascos de nieve aislados. Se esperan acumulaciones, si las hay, que sean leves.

Miércoles (Máxima 34, Mínima 9): Soleado. Aún frío.

PERSPECTIVA EXTENDIDA:

Jueves (Máxima 42, Mínima 19): Mayormente soleado.

Viernes (Máxima 43, Mínima 24): Parcialmente soleado.

Sábado (Máxima 50, Mínima 26): Soleado.

Domingo (Máxima 53, Mínima 35): Parcialmente nublado con un 20 % de probabilidad de lluvias.

NOTE:

Some of us, including Cullman, Walker, and Winston Counties, have been upgraded to an Extreme Cold Warning. 

DISCUSSION:

At 7 PM skies are overcast in Cullman with a temperature of 27 degrees. The dewpoint is 16 degrees, making the relative humidity 64%. Winds are from the Northwest at 8 mph with higher gusts up to 15 mph, making the wind chill 19 degrees already. (That's dangerous, pipe-busting weather, just a reminder.) The pressure is 30.28 inches and rising. Visibility is ten miles. 

Overall today was overcast and breezy with isolated wintry showers across the Tennessee Valley. Sometimes the observing sites couldn't tell if it was sleet, snow, or freezing rain coming down. At least they said "unknown precipitation". And with it this cold, it's not going to be plain old rain, not likely. Haven't heard of any major travel issues though. 

But while I'm thinking about it, here is the best link I know of to check Alabama road conditions. You might find a use for it if we were to get anything else Tuesday. 

We actually still have some of those wintry showers moving through the area. This is probably mostly light snow with maybe some sleet pellets mixed in. 

This stuff is really light, but in this cold, anything that comes down is not going to melt. We won't get above freezing again, most of us, until Wednesday or even Thursday. 

Our High today was 37 back around Midnight, as it was turning over from Saturday night. Our current temperature of 27 is our Low so far. So you can see why I'm not reporting Highs and Lows for multiple sites tonight. One is confusing enough. You can thank me later. 

And tonight is our first night of temporarily being relocated to Alaska, or at least the Canadian border. It's going to feel that way for a few days. If you can't make heads or tails of these weather maps, you can understand that plain language. And if you can't, go watch Family Guy and leave me alone. I can only do so much to help people out. Some people really are a lost cause. Hopefully none of you readers are, but if you really stocked up on milk in case the power goes out . . . I'm gonna' pretend like I don't know you. Mmmmmkay?

Tomorrow we are just going to get to enjoy weather that as my late Papaw would say, is "colder than a well-digger's aiss." And that "i" is necessary, by the way, to convey his pronunciation of the vulgar reference to the well-digger's gluteus maximus. Memories of his warm brick heater notwithstanding, and how his dog, Miss Baby, used to warm herself on nights like this, we'll only have a light North breeze tomorrow, but it will put wind chill values down in the single digits. Tonight/in the morning, many of us may see wind chill values in the negative numbers, a few degrees below zero. 

But tomorrow looks sunny. The Low tonight should get down to about 10 degrees, and then we'll warm up (HA!) to about 27-28 degrees tomorrow. Normally a wind of 5-10 mph is no big deal, but tomorrow, I wager not many people are going to like that light breeze. Maybe I was exaggerating calling this Alaska weather but not by much. 

Hey, but guess what? I just checked the forecast for Alaska, out of curiosity, and Juneau, AK, is having rain showers tomorrow, a High of 41 and a Low of 38. They've got some snow going on this evening. So tomorrow we are technically going to be colder than Alaska is right now! How about that?

Tomorrow, of course, is Martin Luther King Day and Inauguration Day. And they had to move the ceremony inside. So Carrie Underwood will stay warm. I think she's the only person there I actually care about, not because I've got a warm heart, just because she's a hottie who can really sing. And acoustics are better inside. So she'll sound good. 

I just can't figure out why people weren't beating down my door for a broadcast meteorology job as soon as I had to drop out of school. I always keep things so classy and politically correct, and never a touch of cheap male chauvinist misogyny even hinted at . . . geez . . . 

You know what I'd love? If instead of some patriotic anthem, Carrie broke into "Crazy Angels" and threatened to spank Donald Trump if he didn't break it down with her and shake his bootie and sing along, "Even good girls like to have a good time!"

Then I'd be singing "God Bless America!"

Okay, but seriously, we'll have that Gulf Low (and by the way, is it the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, Gulf of Greenland . . . ? . . . did they change it lately?) moving up from Louisiana and thereabouts on Tuesday. Crazy as it seems, this is our snowmaker this go-round, and most the snow is going to be down around the Gulf Coast. Since we were talking about female singers earlier, I do believe Taylor Swift and Lana del Rey made a song about snow at the beach. So some people in real life may be seeing something weird but really beautiful down that way, as the song says. I've never seen snow on the beach. So I'm jealous of those folks for this system. 

The global models as well as the NAM have really backed off, even Tuesday evening, on the idea of snow in North Alabama. This is mainly for the Southern half of the state, where a Winter Storm Watch is in effect. We might get a little bit in North Alabama, but I think Tennessee is safe from this one. 

Will forecast a 20% chance of snow, High near 30, Low near 13. Meh. 

Actually this forecast has been quite challenging, and I'm just glad we're about to have Tuesday over with. If it snows, I recommend binge-watching Carrie Underwood music videos. Or better yet, Sara Evans, since she lives in Alabama now, I think. One of those two ladies will thaw you out while you try to sing and realize you're only caterwauling. But even good girls who can't sing like to have a good time, right? Girls just wanna' have fun . . . no copyright infringement intended by repeating the words of the great, multi-hair-colored Cyndi Lauper. 

And sometimes guys wanna' have fun too, especially if their throat is too sore to sing, and the radio and tomato soup are all that's motivating them to do a weather forecast. 

High pressure behind that, sunny skies, a High in the mid-30's and a Low near 10 degrees again, maybe some of us dipping into the single digits. I don't think many places up here will see a snowpack after all. So I think Cullman will get into the mid-30's on Wednesday. 

Places like Huntsville, Muscle Shoals, up into Tennessee probably don't get above freezing until Thursday. 

Which looks mostly sunny, starting the day around 20 degrees and warming to about 40 degrees or so. 

It now looks like Friday's clipper system will be a dry one. 

Meanwhile a cat named Stormy is stalking and planning to kill some kind of a bug that is clearly not a roach. Hope she succeeds. Haven't seen any roaches around here in a long, long time, thanks to the fine folks at Cook's Pest Control. Not that they'd want to be associated with such a tasteless blog as this. Then again, they do deal with vermin all the time, so they can probably stomach all these insane ramblings. 

We might see some flurries out of this system, but I wouldn't count on it. Overall Friday looks mostly sunny, High in lower 40's, Low in lower 20's. 

High pressure holds Saturday, sunny skies, High near 50, Low in mid-20's. 

Then with another front approaching, Sunday will feature a chance for at least isolated rain, High in lower 50's, Low in mid-30's. 

Still can't get over how Chuck Doswell and David Lynch both died within a few days of each other, two of my favorite people out there in the larger world. Chuck gave us a lot of what we take for granted as far as understanding severe weather now, even the concept of a supercell thunderstorm. He and his friends figured out a lot of this stuff without computers, let alone phones with radar on them, in the early days of storm chasing. I didn't know him well personally, but my heart goes out to his wife, Vickie, whom he mentioned often in his public posts or if somebody interviewed him. She was the one person who could get away with posting on his blog using a pseudonym. I remember she was a nurse. Sometimes life is really sad that way. A year or two ago a rock journalist I admire from England posted that his wife was dying from cancer, and she was a nurse. To my surprise, she had a tough time with the healthcare system just like anyone else would. But she was very loved in her last years, last days. I have no doubt that Dr. Doswell knew he was loved in his last days, whether he had something going on or whether the grim reaper came after him suddenly. I know his friend Al Moller had a long battle with Alzheimer's before his death. And that was especially tragic if you ever heard him give a talk. His mind was sharp as a whip. Like I said yesterday, we're just lucky to have had these people around as long as we did. 

Whenever one of his good friends died, Chuck would post a detailed tribute to them on his personal blog. And I hope one of his good friends will honor him in the same way he honored his friends. A lot of them, he would note, never advanced far in the National Weather Service because they spoke their minds too freely, were too honest. Pretty sure that included Al Moller. It's not my place to write a lengthy tribute to Chuck, I don't guess, since we only interacted very casually every now and then. I mostly knew him through his writings and him being on podcasts and things. But he sure was one of a kind. His star shone very brightly. He was brilliant. And who couldn't love a meteorologist living in Oklahoma who went around wearing a cowboy hat, anyway? 

How did I get all sappy all of a sudden? This was supposed to be a snarky joke of a forecast discussion. 

Most of the snow is staying over South Alabama, according to all the signals, now that we're within two days of the event. We might see a dusting or very light accumulations (probably well under half an inch) in isolated places in North Alabama, but I'm beginning to wonder if even that is going to happen. For people with travel plans (like even to work and back), that's good news. 

Stay warm. 

Unless of course, you enjoy frostbite and hypothermia, and have a death wish. In that case, who am I to judge? 

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@thatweatherdude

Oh by the way, I saw a stupid mistake I made in yesterday's discussion. I said that people, pets, and plants could suffer frostbite and hypothermia. I guess I'll just leave it that way in case anybody wants to howl with laughter at the weather guy who thinks plants can get frostbite and hypothermia.