These are images of a nice afternoon shower today in northern Shelby County from ABC 33/40 Skywatcher Will Roe... he reports:

"Here are some pictures of a pretty heavy passing shower from earlier this
evening.  My location was between Helena and Bessemer on Shelby County
Highway 52.  It came down hard enough to cause some ponding of water on the
shoulder of Hwy 52 as well as in grassy areas.  Just goes to show why you
never take rain totally out of the forecast on a summer day!"

The Thursday afternoon map discussion video is on the server:

http://www.jamesspann.com/

Be sure and scroll down and read J.B.'s "Weather By The Numbers" today... and see those great sunset shots from yesterday. I am always amazed by the quality of digital images sent to us by our viewers...

RIGHT NOW: As expected, not much happening on the radar... only isolated showers in areas south of Birmingham. Interesting to note the wedge type effect again today over far East Alabama; with an easterly flow our SKYCAM site atop Mt. Cheaha is showing only 81 degrees now with a fairly thick cloud cover. At 3:00 p.m. Birmingham is at 90, and Demopolis shows 93. Once again we were a little too hot on the afternoon highs today.

TOMORROW-SATURDAY: No real change over the next two days. The upper air ridge should keep showers and storms at a minimum; afternoon highs will be in the low to mid 90s.

SUNDAY-MONDAY: Lots of model variation here. The 12Z GFS pushes a surface front through here late Sunday night and Monday morning, which would suggest perhaps the best chance of showers and storms Sunday afternoon into Sunday night, followed by the activity shifting down into South Alabama by Monday. This might be a little fast, and we won't change the forecast at this point. We will continue to mention a chance of showers and storms on both Sunday and Monday.

NEXT WEEK: Drier air will probably slip into North Alabama following the front, and for now the weather looks mostly rain-free for the northern counties on Tuesday and Wednesday. But, remember fronts have a hard time moving south through Alabama in August...

TROPICS: The system off the coast of South Carolina just can't get its act together. Looks like it will drift inland before becoming an official tropical cyclone, but breezy conditions and a few showers and storms are likely for parts of the coast from Charleston down to Jacksonville and Daytona Beach during the next 36 hours or so. The actual low will move slowly to the southwest, through far southern Georgia or northern Florida. One wonders if this will do anything if it happens to get into the Gulf of Mexico...

Our low in the Gulf isn't showing any sign of development as it moves toward South Texas, and the rest of the Atlantic basin is pretty quiet right now.

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I will have the next map discussion video posted by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow!

* 111 in Death Valley was the hottest in the USA yesterday. That place still holds the all-time high for the USA with 134.

* 31 at Stanley, Idaho and Wainwright, Alaska was the coldest in the 50 states this morning. Stanley competes for the spot in the lower 48 that has the lowest temperature on the most days each year.

* 15 is the most number of days in any one summer that the temperature reached 100 or higher in Birmingham. That happened in 1925 followed by 14 in 1930 and again in 1980.

* 74/51 is the normal high/low in Birmingham on October 17. That is exactly two months from now. During that time, we will likely look out and the sky will be so blue and the visibility so great that we can imagine we can see all the way to New York or Los Angeles. We cannot, of course, but it is a refreshing time of year. We will probably look back to the summer we are experiencing with bad memories.

* 8:01 p.m. is the latest time of sunset in our longest days of summer. Sunset today is 7:31, so we have lost exactly one-half hour of daylight in the evenings.

* 5:36 a.m. is the earliest time of sunrise during our longest days. Sunrise today was 6:10 a.m., so we have lost 34 minutes during the morning.

* 64 minutes is how much daylight we have lost since our longest days.

* 104 was the high in Dallas-Ft. Worth as their long hot summer continues. They are expecting 105 today and 103 Friday and at least 100 all the way through next Wednesday. It was 107 yesterday in Laredo.

* 106 was the high in Paris, Texas yesterday, where Gene Stallings lives. That is up in NE Texas on good old US-82. We have traveled through Paris many times.

* 6 is the number of hours that Little Miss Molly parked her little 9-pound body under the bed during Wednesday's vicious lightning storms. Even after the storms were over, she decided to stay under the bed. I guess she was forecasting more thunderstorms. It was some of the worst lightning we have had in the 5 years we have lived here and I started to crawl under the bed with Little Miss Molly and forget about severe weather updates.

* ????? is the unknown number of CG (Cloud to Ground) and GC (Ground to Cloud) lightning strokes we had Wednesday. I sure wish I knew how many there were around the state. I think the number would utterly amaze you. There were several buildings set on fire by the lightning. One of the latest reported was in Southside, a city with a population of 8,000 near Gadsden. Only the garage left standing.

* 3 cups is all the coffee I have had this morning--less than 1/2 of normal by late morning. I have a feeling that Dave has had twice as many cups. (Dave posts in the comment section of the BLOG frequently.)

* 75 was the low this morning at Black Creek in NE Etowah County. Vic Bell reports that is the warmest overnight low so far this year.

Thanks to Mike McCormick for sharing these pictures, taken by John Wellborn yesterday in Clay County:

The Thursday morning map discussion video is on the web, and available on iTunes:

http://www.jamesspann.com/

Don't forget we offer the video now in Quicktime and Windows Media format... take your pick.

I often am asked why in the world do I wake up at 4:52 a.m. to produce this blog discussion and Internet video (not to mention doing weather on two dozen radio stations) after working the late TV shift (getting home after 11:00 p.m.). I must confess fatigue does creep in toward the end of the work week, but this early morning period has become one of my favorite parts of the day. Quiet time to begin the day... everyone needs that. A little time to think, spend in the Word (the Bible), and review weather data. Hey, doesn't get any better than that.

VERY QUIET: This is really a quiet time this morning. No tropical storms or hurricanes, no thunderstorms around here. And, our weather looks pretty benign over the next seven days. Guess I should be thankful for that; the last two summers featured non-stop hurricane madness which resulted in very little "down time".

TROPICS: Lets begin with a tropical review... the window for the system just off the coast of the Carolinas to develop is closing. Stronger winds aloft should keep this from becoming a tropical cyclone as it approaches the coast. A good "no call" b the Hiurricane Center yesterday afternoon. And, our weak low in the Gulf of Mexico shows no sign of organization as it moves slowly to the southwest.

Out in the far eastern Atlantic, the birthplace of many major hurricanes this time of the year, the weather is very calm.

AROUND HERE: Hot is the word today; most spots will reach the mid 90s, some upper 90s might show up over the northwest part of the state. And, with warm air aloft, don't expect to see much on radar. Any afternoon showers or storms should be very isolated.

The GFS hints at that same kind of weather tomorrow and over most of the weekend. In fact, the GFS (at least the 00Z run) has really backed off on the rain opportunity early next week, which is in direct conflict with our forecast over on the seven day page. You don't change a forecast based on one model run, so we will leave it alone for now and take a look at the 12Z run. A cold front should slip in here Monday night and that often brings a nice increase in diurnal convection this time of the year. Drier and slightly cooler air should follow for Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

AUGUST MEMORIES: Yesterday was the 29th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley... I was actuallty working a radio shift at the BIG 1230, WTBC, on August 16, 1977, and I clearly recall getting the bulletin about his death around 4:30 p.m. on our old clacking Associated Press teletype machine, and reading it on the air after Howard Cosell's sports report (which aired for a few minutes on the network at 4:25). As I recall, I played the song "Love Me Tender". Being the program director, I made the decision to put together a one hour special featuring Elvis music that night at 7:00, and our sales manager had it sold by 5:00! I was 21 years old and playing rock and roll music on the big Top 40 radio station in Tuscaloosa. Didn't get much better than that. Funny how memories like just drift into your mind... guess that is a sign of getting OLD.

SKYWATCHERS: When September begins I will probably begin a big push to increase our ABC 33/40 Skywatcher network. Right now we have about 80 volunteers across the state and eastern Mississippi keeping an eye on the sky for us during active weather. They communicate directly with us via an instant message network, and this has been a huge success. Doppler Radar is great, but we must have ground truth to cut back on the number of false warnings. I am particularly interested in getting new Skywatchers from rural areas, where reports are scarce. Most of our Skywatchers have some SKYWARN training (how to spot small scale features of thunderstorms), and have a big interest in weather. We will have them together for our annual Storm Alert XTREME training event in the fall (we will annouce the date and time later; everyone is invited. If you love weather and are interesting in joining the Skywatcher network, send me a note and tell me about yourself: jspann@abc3340.com

CHECK IT OUT: Lots of cool stuff over on WeatherParty:

http://www.weatherparty.com/

That dust devil video is amazing!

I will have the afternoon map discussion video posted by 3:30 this afternoon!