In May 1944, Allied Supreme Commander Eisenhower made the decision to launch the Allied Invasion of France on June 5, 1944. The most important factor related to favorable tides and moonlight conditions. But weather conditions were almost as important in the setting of the date. Climatologically, conditions in June were expected to be the best, but as the month of June 1944 arrived, weather maps looked very stormy.

Weather charts on June 3rd and 4th showed a depressing situation for forecasters and military leaders. An unprecedented number of low pressure systems poised to move across the invasion area. But Allied forecasters had an advantage. Since their forces controlled most of the North Atlantic and weather data was more plentiful to them than to the Germans, they could see what was coming. The Germans could not.

This data revealed a small window of better weather that would occur on Tuesday, June 6th. If the invasion could not be launched then, it might not be possible to launch it for a month, or perhaps even a year. On this date, Allied Supreme Commander Eisenhower made the decision to postpone the long-awaited invasion of France.

The masterful forecast permitted a successful surprise landing on the beaches of Normandy. A brief lull in the stormy weather allowed the invasion to commence, much to the surprise of the Germans, who thought the weather too inclement.

The Friday afternoon map discussion video is on the server:

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

How about that radar? Nothing showing up as I write this... quite a change from recent days. A few isolated showers are possible later in the day, but most places will stay dry. Tomorrow will be much the same; partly sunny, warm, and humid with only isolated afternoon showers.

We expect the coverage of scattered showers and storms to increase a bit on Sunday as moisture deepens and the air aloft becomes a little colder. Then, a very moist airmass will be parked over Alabama for all of next week, which means warm, humid days with scattered showers and storms. We might have a day or two with numerous showers and thunderstorms, but trying to define that at this point in the game is very hard to do.

I finally bought a portable MP3 player... guess if we are going to be podcasting I need to be able to see how it all works.

Have a wonderful weekend; spend some time with your family and share some laughs. Life is short!

The ABC 33/40 Podcast for Friday afternoon, June 3 is now being served by our RSS feed.

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The Friday morning map discussion video is online:

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

Don't forget we are offering podcasts twice daily... these are audio forecasts in MP3 format that can be played on your computer or portable MP3 player. They are automatically downloaded to your computer through free software like IPodder, and the feed you need is here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Weathertalk

You can use that same RSS feed to let you know the moment we make updates to this blog.

The upper wave is exiting this morning, with a few isolated showers over northeast Alabama as I write this at a very early hour. We still think most places will be dry today for a change, but again we stress we are NOT leaving out the chance of rain, we are just saying any showers today should be very widely scattered. With the increasing amount of sunshine, temperatures should rise into the low to mid 80s today. Pretty much the same story tomorrow as we start the weekend.

SUNDAY/MONDAY: The air aloft looks a tad colder on Sunday; the 500 mb temp here is expected to drop from -7.2 to -8.2, so afternoon showers or storms night be a little more numerous on Sunday and Monday.

Hard to define any specific features that will bring a better coverage of showers for any day over the latter half of next week, so we will broad brush the forecast all of next week with warm and humid days along with scattered showers and storms. Welcome to summer in Alabama.

TROPICAL: The GFS still depicts a nervous Gulf of Mexico at mid-month. Would not be surprised to see some kind of depression or storm down there, but way to early to be specific....

The ABC 33/40 Podcast for Friday, June 3 is now being served by our RSS feed.

Want to subscribe to our free daily podcast audio weather forecast? Use this RSS feed in your podcast receiving program:

feeds.feedburner.com/Weathertalk