Wednesday (High 74, Low 47): Partly cloudy and windy during the day. Showers and thunderstorms are likely in the evening and night hours, and some storms may be strong - or even reach severe limits.
Thursday (High 50, Low 41): Mostly sunny. Still pretty windy - and turning cold.
Friday (High 63, Low 28): Sunny. Cold - frost or a freeze possible in the morning.
Saturday (High 70, Low 39): Mostly sunny.
Sunday (High 73, Low 44): Increasing clouds with a 40% chance of thunderstorms.
Monday (High 67, Low 49): Partly to mostly sunny with a 20% chance of showers.
Tuesday (High 68, Low 41): Sunny.
I'm not sure how well-trained my satellite eye is, but I'm going to guess that to be a mix of cumulus and cumulostratus (or is it stratocumulus? - yes, it is, get my root words in the right order) clouds across the region today.
We're under a ridge of high pressure for now. We're watching that trough and associated cold front over the Desert Southwest, front stretching up through the Rockies and the Northern Plains up through the Midwest and into the Great Lakes region, actually all the way into Canada.
The timing of the front tomorrow, most of the day probably just stays partly cloudy, and we'll be windy, winds picking up out of the South/Southwest. Look for a High of about 73-74, Low tonight about 47-48. The rain doesn't come in until tomorrow night. Some of it could start in the evening hours, close to sundown.
We do have a marginal risk for some thunderstorms reaching severe limits, damaging winds and large hail both possible. But this risk is on the opposite end of the spectrum from what we saw this past Saturday. This is the lowest risk level the SPC issues - Level 1 out of 5. Things might get a little more organized up in the Ohio Valley with this system, especially in Illinois and Indiana. But even there, it looks like your basic routine severe thunderstorm threat.
But just be aware that a few storms could get strong enough to be considered severe Wednesday evening/night. And if you're in far Northeast Alabama, you'll probably just have general rain and thunderstorms. Most places in this Marginal Risk won't see severe weather. If anything develops, it'll be in isolated spots, usually just one or two severe thunderstorms in a setup like this. But it's our severe weather season from now through May. It's always better to respect the threat, even if it's really low like this one.
If you get a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, the best place to go is a small room without windows on the lowest floor of a sturdy house - better if you're in a site-built house instead of a mobile home, especially if you've got trees around. And a hallway is just fine - but just away from windows and not up on a top floor that's more vulnerable to high winds or something like a falling tree. And of course these storms tend to produce a lot of lightning too, so you stay away from electrical stuff while it's blowing through. But what makes a storm severe is having winds of at least 58 miles per hour or hail at least the size of a quarter.
We'll turn sharply colder behind the front on Thursday, partly to mostly sunny skies and a High near 50, Low near 40. Some places in Southern Tennessee and especially East Tennessee in the Smoky Mountains could see a few snow flakes in the mix late Wednesday night before the cold air comes in Thursday morning, but no meaningful accumulation is expected for most places. Up in the mountains, though, they could see up to two inches of snow.
It'll stay breezy on Thursday with gusts up to 20-25 mph possible. So it'll feel a lot colder, even around here.
High pressure settles in to South Alabama on Friday. And up here in North Alabama we'll also be sunny, lovely day, look for a High making it into the lower 60's, the Low near 30, possibly dipping into upper 20's for some of us.
Then we've got a cold front coming at us on Saturday that may take a while moving through.
Not expecting any rain Saturday, just noticing the front coming at us from the Northwest, should stay mostly sunny with a High closer to 70 and a Low near 40, still pretty dry air in place.
Then Sunday clouds will increase throughout the day with a High in the lower 70's, maybe mid-70's at least for nearby places like Jasper, the morning Low in about the lower 40's. It's at a tricky time range to get the timing exactly right, but overall it looks like our rain and thunderstorms will come in Sunday night. If we see anything during the day, should be pretty isolated, based on how computer model guidance has trended right now.
The risk for any severe thunderstorms with this system may well stay to our West, in the Ark-LA-Tex region and Western MS.
But the GFS is already showing some combination of unstable air and wind shear moving into at least the Western half of North Alabama by 7 PM CDT Sunday evening. And a forecast sounding from around Haleyville shows weak instability but strong wind shear, which would support a marginal risk for damaging wind gusts, maybe an isolated tornado, any hail within the mix would probably be small hail with such low instability. And you have to question whether the wind shear and lift could overcome CAPE values below 500 j/kg and Lifted Indices of only about -1. So this looks like another very low severe weather risk.
But while we're here, let's take a look at Wednesday's severe weather risk too. Check out the NAM.
And it does show enough of a combination of instability and wind shear to notice between 7 PM Wednesday evening and 1 AM Thursday morning. It sort of makes it look like more of a threat for Northwest Alabama and then things weakening as it gets into the Central counties.
Again a forecast sounding near Haleyville shows weak instability combined with enough wind shear to support a few severe thunderstorms. Could see some hail with these storms, but most of it would probably be under severe limits if this guidance is right. Main threat is damaging wind gusts. Can't rule out an isolated tornado in a setup like this, but even though the computer is spitting out "weak tornado", a tornado is not especially likely, just looking at everything. This is mainly a threat for damaging wind gusts.
I glanced at the SREF, but it's really not worth showing because it makes it look like we're unlikely to have any severe thunderstorms around here at all Wednesday night. That's why we only have a marginal risk. Something isolated could go severe Wednesday evening/night, but for the most part we'll just see general rain and thunderstorms with a lot of wind even outside of the showers and storms.
Okay, so where were we in the day to day stuff?
Ah yes, Monday looks like a day of clearing, maybe an isolated shower left over (so probably in the morning, though again, this far in advance, exact timing is tricky to forecast), mostly sunny skies again, front South of the area, High in upper 60's, Low in upper 40's or about 50.
Then Tuesday it looks like we get a clear frontal passage and will have sunny skies with a High in the upper 60's and a Low of 40 or so.
Rainfall totals for this forecast period will average about an inch.
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The National Weather Service in Huntsville confirmed an E/F-1 tornado in Leighton in Lauderdale County from Saturday's severe weather outbreak. Have not seen a tornado survey from Cullman County but did see that the Birmingham office found E/F-2 damage from the same supercell down at Sipsey in Walker County. And from all I can see right now that Huntsville is posting on social media, looks like they only found straight-line wind damage in Cullman County. But I can't find a detailed report on that. There may not be one. I think even our local offices are probably struggling to stay adequately staffed because of Elon Musk having his head too far up his own wherever and making budget cuts to NOAA/NWS recklessly rather than wisely. I appreciate that their employees still put so much effort into taking the time to do it right, do the best they can.
It's an odd situation though. There was a tornado debris signature while the storm was in Cullman County, and I seem to remember some pictures and video that sure made it look like there was still a tornado or at least a wall cloud still there. Sometimes tornadoes lift for a while in supercells. That happened in the Super Tuesday 2008 outbreak. Two significant tornadoes (F-2 and F-3) happened in the same supercell before and after it passed over the city of Nashville that night.
The Sipsey survey hasn't come out yet. But I saw where NWS Birmingham posted that they'd found F-2 damage from it. They have confirmed nine tornadoes in Central Alabama so far and written detailed surveys on them. I'll probably post that when the Sipsey tornado is added to it.
Here's a story from ABC-33/40 that mentions where at least one of the deaths happened in an E/F-3 tornado, an older man who was still in a mobile home, very close to a storm shelter. I don't know the details, but sometimes older people have a hard time getting around, like down to a storm shelter, so just a sad situation there. If you want to look at it in a cold, scientific light, only having two deaths locally in a severe weather outbreak like this is a very good outcome. But if that guy was your neighbor, not a good outcome at all.
And we actually got off pretty easy in Alabama anyway. This event was a lot rougher for places like Mississippi but especially Arkansas and Missouri. One tornado in Arkansas was rated E/F-4, and I believe they are double-checking to see if any of the damage would merit an upgrade to F-5 on that one. Sometimes that can be a fine line, but there were many deaths from this tornado outbreak, just not a lot around here. Actually I just checked and there were three E/F-4 tornadoes from this event total and nine E/F-3's. Looks like there were 145 tornadoes out of this event between March 14, 15, and 16. And it looks like there were at least 40 deaths nationwide.
Today is the anniversary of the 1925 Tri-State Tornado, which killed hundreds of people.
This can be a rough time of year. Compared to that, our weather looks benign for a while. We do need to watch Wednesday night and then Sunday night just in case of any problems, even if they're few and far between. And Friday looks like a cold morning with some frost or even a hard freeze possible. But our tornado outbreak is over with at least. Maybe it'll be a while before we see another one on that level. But we'll see what April brings this year. We could always be lucky and it just be like the old saying that April showers bring May flowers. For now, our threat of stronger storms looks to stay on the low end. No promises for the rest of the season though. If I had to bet on it, I'd say we'll see another fairly significant severe weather threat or two before this season is over - hopefully not another high risk. But just the pattern this year favors a more active year than we've seen in a while. Unless I'm reading too much of my own intuition into it. Which I've been known to do.
Got a lot going on lately, may not have as many weather updates as usual. Things have settled down for the moment even if we do have a few things to watch. Even those severe thunderstorm chances this forecast period, an awful lot of us will just see beneficial rain and maybe some thunder, some gusty winds. If we get severe storms, it might be as little as one or two in the whole TN Valley region. Definitely looking on the lower end for Wednesday evening, and from what we can tell about Sunday this far out, probably similar.
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