I was struck by the fact that no one must have been at work when I stopped by a shopping mall in Annapolis, Maryland on Friday after I arrived at the BWI airport. Every parking space was filled and the roads were jammed with traffic at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. I am sure that this will be a hectic week at local shopping malls, as well as on highways and in the air. I even checked AMTRAK for a possible train ride home Tuesday, but all of the sleeping accommodations were sold out. Let’s take a peek at travel weather for the coming week:
Today, snow showers will spread across the northern tier of states from Idaho to the Great Lakes and over to New England. Some significant lake effect snows will occur in the lee of the Great Lakes. Sunny skies will prevail from the Southwest to the Atlantic Coast. By Tuesday, a big storm system will be taking shape over the Mississippi Valley as moisture returns on the backside of high pressure. Showers will be breaking out from the Lower Mississippi Valley up to the Ohio Valley. Snow showers will fall over the Rockies and around the Great Lakes. On Wednesday, the big storm system will spread inclement weather from the Great Lakes to Texas, with a wintry mix on the backside of the precipitation shield from Detroit across the Indiana into Missouri and down to North Texas. The Atlanta and Dallas hubs may have some delays by then.

On Thursday, the storm system will head east. We could see a little wintry precip along the I-65 corridor from Alabama into Indiana. Rain will overspread the East Coast from New England to Florida. Snow showers will continue over the Great Lakes and over the Rocky Mountain states. The travel weather news is good by Christmas Eve, with much of the country expecting fine weather. Showers will be limited to the immediate Atlantic coast, with snow showers near the Great Lakes.

By Christmas Day, you will be hard pressed to find any precipitation across the country. There will be some lake effect snows in the lee of the Great Lakes and a few showers over extreme South Florida. By Sunday, nice conditions will continue across much of the country east of the Rockies and over the Southwest United States. The only inclement weather by then will be over the Pacific Northwest where a large storm system will be slamming ashore. I wish you good travels this holiday week!

Ran by the home office quickly this afternoon to find gobs of snow reports from northeast Alabama... mostly light flurries, a few decent snow showers, and a few folks reporting the ground briefly white across the mountains of Cherokee, Calhoun, DeKalb, and Jackson counties. Just as expected...

Looks like our best chance of pre-Christmas snow comes Thursday on the back side of the departing storm as it rolls northeast away from us. Not a good way to get the ground white here, but not totally out of the question. Will have long discussion and new video ready tomorrow morning.

Headed back to Hunter Street for the "Cruisers" CD debut concert at the 24/7 building. Seems like there are some people who live, sleep, eat, and breathe weather this time of the year. I think that is way too weird... to those people I might suggest you re-visit your priorities! Take a break and spend some time with the people you love!

Stay warm tonight...

Read J.B.'s great post below this one... he has been forecasting weather in Alabama for 50 years; he is our voice of reason and experience in this office.

I am not working a forecast shift today; don't have time to review enough material... J.B. Elliott and Bill Murray have that covered. I will be back in the saddle tomorrow.

I will be ready for the first FORECAST of Christmas eve and Christmas day bright and early tomorrow morning. Based on the high traffic levels here I need to remind our new readers there is very little skill in a specific weather forecast beyond seven days. That is why we do not forecast specific events beyond seven days.

Then why do we even go there? We are looking for model trends and upper air pattern trends. We can often tell you if the pattern will be cold, stormy, dry, etc... we just cannot be specific. The models can give you many concepts about what will happen, but you simply cannot use them for details beyond seven days. Long time readers and viewers of the web update understand that. Now, having said all of that....

Quite frankly, not much has changed over the past three days on our first two events.

Here are some quick thoughts:

*Today: Echoes on radar to the north; but most of that is not reaching the ground. The real cold air is just getting into Tennessee... so we might hit the low 40s briefly before falling back into the 30s. Flurries are not out of the question, but most folks probably won't see them. We do into the teens tomorrow morning. COLD is the word.

*Pre-Christmas storm: Rain a good bet on Wednesday, maybe a little thunder. Latest guidance from NCEP shows around one inch of rain with this system. Cold air follows quickly on the back side, and as we mentioned here several days ago there could be a change to snow on the back side. This is not the best way to get snow on the ground here, but a brief period of snow flurries or light snow is not out of the question Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

*Christmas storm: This, of course, is the big one since so many people are dreaming of a you know what. Sure, the past three runs of the GFS has gone very cold but dry for Christmas day in north-central Alabama. A Gulf system does indeed show up, but it is pointed at central Florida and just too far to the south for us. Errors can be huge this far in advance. Don't write off the concept of a winter weather threat for parts of the southeast U.S. at Christmas time just yet. Don't just look at the models, look at the pattern, and what it has favored over the years. One way or the other COLD is sure the word for Christmas morning. Will be a little brisk out there trying those new bicycles.

I will be up real early tomorrow for the Monday morning video and the blog update. Stay tuned.

HOW IT LOOKS AT 6:00 O'CLOCK ON THIS SUNDAY MORNING
We may see just a few snow flurries today, but no accumulation is expected. At 6:00 o'clock on this Sunday morning, the artic front was still several hours away from Birmingham so the temperature may recover to 40 or better before starting to fall. The stronger winds will be later this morning and through the afternoon. There should not be very many snow flurries with all of this.

There has been considerable discussion about a threat of snow by Christmas. Yesterday one of the weather models was gung-ho on that and even suggested 4 or more inches for the greater Birmingham area. Only six hours later, that same weather model had completely flip-flopped and pointed to dry weather on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

I have been in weather many years and a snow threat can be one of the most perplexing problems facing forecasters. Remember that the same amount of moisture that would give us one-half inch of rain could give us well over 5 inches of snow. So, errors in forecasting are magnified.

A few years ago, we forecast a three-inch accumulation for the greater Birmingham area three days in advance. It was based on a low pressure area forecast to develop near the Texas coast and would move east and NE passing across Alabama. The forecast track of the low was very accurate, except it was off about 50 miles when it moved through Alabama. So, Childersburg got our three inches of snow and Birmingham got none. We almost got run out of Dodge.

But we can stand the heat. If not, I would have gotten out of this business years ago. I wish I could live to the age of Moses and be involved in weather all that time!

We prefer to be up front and discuss all the possibilities or lack thereof. No hedging. This weather blog and our 7-day discussion are great conduits for that. We hope these discussions are useful.

We don’t mind the challenge. In fact, it can get very exciting and very interesting. You can rest assured that this week we will study every tiny bit of weather data that we can to see if we have a Christmas snow threat. It is still nearly a week away.

The last three GFS model runs show that the moisture will be well to the south of Alabama. It has also backed away from a low pressure area forming in the Gulf. All this indicates dry weather for us on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Yes, that could still change and we will watch and wait. Hower, at this time, we have eliminated mention of any precipitation on those two days.

We have to live with weather models and, overall, they are very useful. However, at times, they can be very confusing. That's the nature of the business but life goes on.