Do local weather forecasters tend to forecast worse case scenarios? That interesting question was posed by an e-mailer recently who reads all of our material and keeps up with local weather in general. In fact, this gentleman is keeping a scorecard on all local weather people this winter to see if he can detect a trend.

He emphasized that he was not on a witch hunt, in fact, he was complimentary. One of his examples was if we were forecasting cold weather several days away and we finally decided that the low would be between 10 and 16, would we be more likely to choose 10. I can only speak for myself. I try to come as close as I can to what the actual low will be. I really believe that all of the Birmingham area forecasters do the same. There are a lot of capable weather people in this town, both in the NWS and in the media.

There are times, however, that I will lean toward a worse case. This is especially true on the first hard freeze of the season when I believe calling for a lower temperature will add urgency to protect plants, pets and pipes.

Then, those much hated snow forecasts! In my opinion, no forecaster in his right mind would try to forecast the exact amount of the expected snow. It is almost impossible. Instead, most of us will choose a range like “snow accumulating 2 to 4 inches or 4 to 7 inches” or something like that. If a certain amount of rain were instead to fall as snow, the amount is multiplied many times over. For example, one-half inch of rain could produce five inches of snow if it all fell as snow and the ground was already cold enough for most of it to stick.

This gentleman has promised to give us a report after winter is over. It will be interesting to see.

-J.B. Elliott

The afternoon video is on the server:

http://beta.abc3340.com/weather/video.hrb

Up with the afternoon update a little early today since will be hitting to road soon to tonight's Storm Alert 2005 show site in Ashville. All 12Z model data is in the house.

The weather still looks excellent for tomorrow and the weekend. We go in the 50s tomorrow, and 60s on Saturday and Sunday. We are going to drop the mention of rain Sunday night. Monday night even be dry.

The idea is this: the first half of next week will be relatively mild as the Polar front stalls out to the north of Alabama as it becomes parallel to the upper air flow. A strong northern branch system finally buckles the flow toward the endf of next week which puts us in much colder air by Friday February 11. Again, no real confidence in details.

The 12Z run of the GFS is trying to set up some kind of split flow, which sets some interesting possibilities if by chance it verifies.

Looks like a fun and challenging forecast period next week and beyond.

Hope to see you at the Storm Alert 2005 show tonight in Ashville!

The Thursday morning video is on the server:

http://beta.abc3340.com/weather/video.hrb

Pretty simple forecast for the next three days. Clouds hang tough today, clearing tonight, and bright sunshine returns tomorrow and Saturday with a nice warming trend. Beyond that, we go deep into troubled forecast waters. Very low forecast confidence in the four to seven day time frame.

I think the GFS is out to lunch... both the 00Z run and the 06Z run, so use with caution. Still, it looks like the lead short wave might dampen out, so Monday's rain event might not bring as much rain as initially thought.

Looks like we stay mild and wet at times on Tuesday and Wednesday while the upper air pattern keeps us in a southwest flow aloft, holding up the arrival of colder air. The pattern still suggests sharply colder air in here sometime in the February 10-15 time frame, just how we get there remains up in the air.

Hope to see you tonight at the Storm Alert 2005 show tonight at Ashville High School... that place will be packed so get there early to get a seat!