FORECAST:
Monday (High 71, Low 42): Sunny. Warm.
Tuesday (High 73, Low 50): Mostly sunny. Warm.
Wednesday (High 75, Low 56): Partly cloudy with widely scattered showers and thunderstorms possible throughout the day. Rain showers will become more numerous at night.
EXTENDED OUTLOOK:
Thursday (High 74, Low 62): Thunderstorms likely - a few could be strong.
Friday (High 69, Low 54): Partly to mostly sunny with a 20% chance of showers.
Saturday (High 73, Low 53): Partly cloudy with a 30% chance of showers/a thunderstorm.
Sunday (High 70, Low 55): Partly to mostly cloudy with a 40% chance of showers/a thunderstorm.
PRONÓSTICO:
Lunes (Máxima 71, Mínima 42): Soleado. Cálido.
Martes (Máxima 73, Mínima 50): Mayormente soleado. Cálido.
Miércoles (Máxima 75, Mínima 56): Parcialmente nublado con lluvias muy dispersas y tormentas eléctricas posibles durante el día. Las lluvias serán más numerosas por la noche.
PERSPECTIVA EXTENDIDA:
Jueves (Máxima 74, Mínima 62): Tormentas eléctricas probables, algunas podrían ser fuertes.
Viernes (Máxima 69, Mínima 54): Parcialmente a mayormente soleado con un 20 % de probabilidad de lluvias.
Sábado (Máxima 73, Mínima 53): Parcialmente nublado con un 30 % de probabilidad de lluvias/tormentas eléctricas.
Domingo (Máxima 70, Mínima 55): Parcialmente a mayormente nublado con un 40 % de probabilidad de lluvias/tormentas eléctricas.
NOTES:
The next physical SKYWARN class is tomorrow evening at 6 PM in Fayetteville, Tennessee. Severe Weather Awareness Day will be February 22, Saturday in Nashville. And there are online storm spotter classes for people who can't make it to these in-person events. All of them are free, but you do have to register for the SWAD or the online SKYWARN classes.
This week is Severe Weather Awareness Week for Alabama. The spring season will be here before you know it.
And for some reason, the last drought information statement for the Huntsville area that's showing up is from January 10. So there's the link if you want to wait on the glitch to get fixed.
And major thanks to Coyote J. Calhoun tonight for reminding everyone that we can live without buying eggs at the grocery store. If they're expensive, hey, don't buy them, let chickens have their children . . . save the chickens . . . anybody who eats an egg is a Communist! Har har har. Except he's using dated language. The accusation now is Marxist, so don't be a Marxist, leave the chickens alone. And have no worries about the bird flu. Lord knows there's enough other sickness going around lately.
And I guess I'll keep doing the Spanish versions of forecasts sometimes just because I like being contrary. It's not fashionable these days to say much more than, "Go back whur ye' came from!"
It was a sunny day in the Tennessee Valley, breezy at times, and pretty warm for this time of year. We had a High of 68 in Cullman and a Low of 37. Jasper had a High of 70 and Low of 32, right down at the freezing mark this morning. Haleyville saw a High of 68 and Low of 39.
Peeking up to our neighbors just to the North, Huntsville had a High of 67 and Low of 40. And Nashville had a High of 68, Low of 38. There were a few more fair-weather clouds up that way.
This pattern with high pressure in place and zonal (westerly) upper-level wind flow will continue tomorrow, and we'll see another sunny day with less breeziness, just light Southwest winds at the surface. High should be about 70, Low tonight about 40 or so.
Tuesday looks much the same, maybe more fair-weather clouds returning to the sky as we get more Southwest wind flow at the surface and even at the mid/lower levels of the atmosphere, winds out of the West/Southwest. Which brings us some Gulf moisture - some would say from the Gulf of America, but the thing is, if we start calling it that, then we can't follow George Strait's old advice to blame it on Mexico, and we'll have to start taking credit for all the hurricanes that come from there again. I find it kind of strange that the people who are so keen on the renaming of this body of water also want to blame everything on Mexico, beyond what George Strait probably ever meant in that old song. So if we totally ditch "Gulf of Mexico", just stop and think about it, now all the hurricanes are our fault again. Because it's our Gulf up this way, not Mexico's anymore.
Anyway, seems like this page had some interesting stuff about the history of the name. Was looking at it the other day.
After last hurricane season, I think if I was the one in charge of renaming it, I would have named it something far less flattering.
Anyway, no hurricanes this time of year, of course, and it's really not bringing us trouble on Tuesday, just a little warmer air, a little more moisture. We'll see a High in the lower 70's, about 70-73, a Low near 50.
We have a cold front coming in Wednesday, but it looks weak and like it will stall out just to our North, bringing more rain to Middle and Northern Tennessee up through parts of the Ohio Valley and Midwest. While a low pressure system is moving out of the Plains and up through that general region.
So our rain chances down this way look on the lower end, about 20-30%, might pick up some at night, the coverage of rain, but during the day, a High in the mid-70's after a Low in the mid-50's.
Then on Thursday as the front continues to move through the region, rain showers will be likely at times during the day, could also see some thunderstorms, with a High in the lower 70's and a Low of about 60 or so.
And any time it's this warm in January and you've got storms coming in, have to watch for a few stronger storms, to be on the safe side. For now, the overall severe thunderstorm risk is looking low - not zero, but marginal.
And the Storm Prediction Center hasn't outlined any areas for a 15% risk of anything organized like that for Thursday yet, because there's not enough evidence to. Worth keeping an eye on, especially if you live in a mobile home or are in another situation where you'd need to leave for better shelter if the weather did get ugly. We don't really get a season around here that is totally safe from such things, but our main season is in March, April, and May.
Looks like that front will stall in Central Alabama and try to slowly move back Northward, but it just isn't looking too strong. Friday we'll see a High in about the upper 60's, Low in lower 50's, and we can cut the rain chance down to minimal in North Alabama, about 20%.
Will bring the rain chance back to 30% for Saturday as the front makes it back across the Tennessee border probably.
Looks like that front will still be playing footsie with our region on Sunday.
Have a look at it on a more standard weather map instead of raw model guidance.
Oh by the way, on Saturday with that North of us as a warm front, our Highs should get into the 70's again. On Sunday, we might not quite make it to 70, Low might be more toward the mid-50's due to more moisture, and since the front is back in motion, makes sense to raise rain chance back to 40-50% range.
So the extended looks kind of unsettled. It's an unusual setup for January, but after that Siberian cold we had for a while . . . oh wait, and it's not even January anymore! What am I talking about? See, these seasons can move along faster than you notice sometimes.
Rainfall totals are tricky in a setup like this, but best estimate from the Weather Prediction Center is up to about a quarter-inch for most of North Alabama, more like a half-inch near the AL/TN state line, and then you have to go up into Middle Tennessee to see many amounts up to a full inch or greater.
Not convinced we have any organized severe weather on Thursday, but in case we were to get an isolated stronger storm somewhere, remember the basic idea: Get into a small interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy house or other strong building, try not to be caught in a mobile home or something else that's vulnerable to winds, like a house sitting up on blocks.
CHATTER:
Well, the news certainly hasn't been boring lately. I could express condolences about that airline crash, but it turned ultra-political even faster than I remember the Sandy Hook shooting turning that way in 2012. Which says it all for me. Sad stuff.
I saw where Jewel, the great folk singer who used to be tough as nails, made a ridiculous apology because she serenaded Robert Kennedy Jr. as part of her support for his ideas on health care reform; she does a lot of work for mental health these days.
One musician who didn't apologize for even the most heinous things he was accused of over the past four years, staying quiet in public but insisting on his innocence in court filings, Marilyn Manson was cleared of any criminal charges by the cops out in LA. Maybe they thought he brought the fires by some kind of hoodoo, but something tells me, if they investigated him for four years and didn't find anything charge-worthy, it was probably about as full of hot air as the whole saga Johnny Depp went through. And I can't remember how long it's been since they both did that thing with Alice Cooper called the Hollywood Vampires, but that was really cool. I think they're all three sober now, know Alice has been for a long time, but I don't keep up with all the celebrity gossip usually. I just like it better when people get off the sauce than when they end up dying from it.
And I was going to share a tweet here where Damien Echols said he was close to getting the DNA evidence examined to finally clear his name, but it looks like it has been deleted before I got a chance to share it. I have a real bee in my bonnet these days in favor of people who have been falsely accused of anything. Seems like it's one of those paranoid times of history where everybody wants to point the finger and blame other folks. I think that's going to continue to get worse, but where I've got a voice, I've got a right to say, hey, I don't care for it.
I saw where some people said Neil Gaiman was "going DARVO" in his attempt to defend himself against #metoo allegations.
For anyone not aware, that's one of those annoying modern acronyms. It stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
And I would challenge anyone on the planet to show me where Neil did that in his statement I linked to above. He did deny that he abused anyone, but if he attacked anyone with those words, it was himself, admitting that he had been selfish and regretted it. And when you admit to having made mistakes, that pretty much negates the idea of reversing the victim and offender. He sounded blindsided to me, like he said some of it wasn't even true, and then the things that were true were being portrayed way differently than he remembered them. Even when he went back and read the messages back and forth . . . which was what caused him to reflect that he'd been selfish and too lost in his own head to think about other people's feelings sometimes. No apologies are good enough anymore, the mob keeps crying for blood. The only way I find his statement wrong is if he's lying. I've seen this ridiculous circus play out with several famous people now, and I'm just tired of it. People are cancelling shows based on his work and trying to act all self-righteous, and I hate it. Maybe in four or five years, people will realize rushing to judgement was a mistake here too. Even if it turns out he's guilty of some of the horrid stuff, which he says he didn't do, I still think he deserves a fair trial before being punished like this. And by the way, I only started reading his stuff right before the pandemic hit. He's a good writer. If anything, the way he's being condemned before being tried makes me want to support his writing more. Cancel culture has had its day, and I'm to the point I reject it with a whole heart.
It hits a personal note with me because there was a suicide in my family a few months ago, last summer, and this guy's parents had a nasty divorce. For years I bought the narrative that the father was just a monster based on one wrong thing he did in a moment of extreme anger. But then I learned from reliable sources in the family that the mother had done things that were just as bad to the man who is now her ex-husband, and done them on more of a regular basis, long before the incident they got divorced because of. And this guy who killed himself before he turned 18 or started his last year of high school was supposed to return to his mother's house from his father's house that weekend. At least that's the best I've been able to piece it together. (I've grown very distant from that part of the family, and they didn't respond when I tried to reconnect after this happened.) So I have no use for this modern trend of pretending that women are saints who always tell the truth, and men are always the villains who just use and misuse women. There is a limit to that where common sense has to come back into play. I wish life was more simple and black-and-white sometimes, but that's not how things really are. And few things are a harsher dose of reality than getting a call that someone you remember as a sweet, bright kid has blown himself to oblivion. I don't know exactly what happened there, but I can imagine. I dealt with enough of that same basic thing when I was his age. For what it's worth, I wrote a poem for him. Which I've only let a couple other people see, besides a publisher . . . who will probably reject it.
Anyway, as an old schoolteacher I loved would say, on to more pleasant things.
I started to make this the only featured item I was willing to "chatter" about this time . . .
Kelly Clarkson did an incredible rendition of Billie Eilish's song "Birds of a Feather". And even if you're not a fan of either singer, trust me, give this one a chance. For that matter, catch "Kellyoke" any time you can. What she can do with her voice amazes me nearly every time I catch one of those videos. I tend to forget she doesn't play an instrument because her voice steals the show from whatever band is backing her. Besides, both of these women seem to practice feminism in its positive sense. Unless I hear of one of them clobbering a boyfriend with a frying pan, I'll keep that opinion. And even then, I'll wonder if he had it coming. Some guys really do. It can go either way . . .
If anybody was as depressed as I was by Billy Ray Cyrus's ultra-lame version of "Achy Breaky" (wait, that's sort of redundant . . . nah, I do like some of his music . . . but how that song was ever a phenomenon still baffles me), I offer an antidote from his daughter Miley, who did an impeccable version of "Doll Parts" by Courtney Love/Kurt Cobain quite some time back. I need some good music tonight. And curious readers get to share some of it here underneath the weather forecast stuff.
Today I let the Stormy cat get some sunshine and fresh air for a good two or three hours probably, to sort of make up for the time she had to stay in a lot when it was so cold and I was really sick and stuff. She attracted the attention of the lady who donated her to me last year, who still can't believe she's the same cat. Says she looks happier and fatter, but that she means the fatter part in a good way. She let her former mom pet her and didn't try to bite anymore.
That drew the attention of a couple kids from the neighborhood who were visiting their dad for the weekend, a friend of mine who soon showed up too with his uncle. And we mainly shot the bull and watched the kids try to do stunts on their bikes. Well, one of them had a scooter. Stormy never did quite warm up to them, kept running back inside or at least hiding behind me. I managed to get Salem to come out, and he even let one girl pet him (he's the black cat I got after a bad storm a couple years ago . . . Stormy is the tabby female) before he got freaked out by the other kids making loud noises and ran back inside. It kind of cracks me up seeing cats that are afraid of kids . . . reminds me of that old cartoon with that Elmyra character who wanted to pick up all the bunnies and hug and squeeze them to little bits. And they would run when they saw her coming. I almost never had control of the TV when I was a kid anyway, and I haven't seen that in forever. Lately I've been watching Twin Peaks again on the one streaming service I'm willing to put down money for at the moment. David Lynch was the man. And that show was unique. I bet it was thrilling to see in real time as the episodes came out. I sort of envy the people who saw it that way, but then . . . I'm not immune to this era of binge-watching. It's one of the few shows that's worth doing that with.
And I guess that's enough chatter. Except that I do worry about Salem hardly ever wanting to go out anymore. Maybe I've been a bad influence on him that way, staying in when I can and just sort of letting the rest of the world continue to go to hell in its own way. And if I can make one contribution to this era of ever-increasing paranoia, he really might have a deal with HAARP to help them control the weather. But if he does . . . uh . . . that's classified.
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