Just wanted to pass this note along from Alabama Power for those of you in Shelby County:

Planned emergency power outage tonight affecting select areas

BIRMINGHAM – Tonight Alabama Power is planning an emergency power outage for select areas along Highway 280.

Because of an equipment malfunction, emergency repair work must be performed on power lines serving areas along Highway 280 and Highway 41. These areas include Highland Lakes, Shoal Creek, Mt. Laurel, Greystone Farms and the City of Chelsea.

This will require an interruption of electric service from approximately midnight, Monday, Aug. 7, to 1 a.m., Tuesday, Aug. 8. In addition, Alabama Power has attempted to contact the customers impacted by this outage via telephone.

We apologize for the inconvenience and will work to minimize the time customers are without electricity.

That is the story across Alabama this afternoon and in other areas.

These are some high temperatures this afternoon based ONLY on hourly observations. It is possible the actual high occurred between hourly observation times. We will know the final high after 7 pm.

97 at Birmingham Airport
100 at Muscle Shoals
99 in Decatur, Huntsville, Montgomery, Anniston, Gadsden (that seems to be the temperature of choice.

OTHER PLACES
99 in Tupelo and Columbus, Miss.
97 in Memphis
100 in Oklahoma City
102 in Wichita Falls, Tex.
93 in Dallas-Fort Worth (but down yo 75 at 5 pm in a cooling thundershower)

Showers were almost non-existent over North and Central Alabama late this afternoon. But there was one over Eastern St. Clair County at the north tip of Logan Martin Lake.

The Monday afternoon map discussion video is on the web, and also available on iTunes:

http://www.jamesspann.com/

Wow... my first day back and I am already running behind. Been helping Mike Raita with some Internet business this afternoon and trying to catch up after being gone all last week. You can watch the video for the long story...

TOMORROW: No real change in the height fields or thermal profile... so more of the same. Afternoon temps peaking mostly in the mid 90s with only isolated afternoon showers or storms. Most places remain dry.

WEDNESDAY: Changes begin as the upper air high shifts to the west. The air aloft will be colder, and afternoon showers and storms should be a little more active.

THURSDAY-FRIDAY: We will have a fairly decent chance of getting a decent coverage of afternoon showers and storms as the air aloft continues to cool slightly, and the main heat bubble moves well to the west. Don't get me wrong, the weather will be fairly hot and humid, but afternoon highs will be closer to 90, and where showers and storms develop there will be some nice temporary cooling in the afternoon and evening hours.

WEEKEND PEEK: The GFS tries to push a surface front down to near Montgomery on Sunday; not so sure that will happen. But, with a surface boundary meandering around here somewhere, scattered mainly afternoon showers and storms certainly have to be mentioned both Saturday and Sunday. Highs for the weekend should be in the low 90s, exactly normal for mid-August in Alabama.

NEXT WEEK: The old surface front washes out, and we will roll with the typical summer forecast for most of next week. Doesn't pay to be cute, trying to determine which days will have the best coverage of afternoon showers and storms this far in advance.

TROPICS: Our system in the middle of the Atlantic near 12.5N/43W still looks good, although convection is a bit limited today. I expect another nocturnal blowup tonight, and this will probably be upgraded to a tropical depression tomorrow. The models have shifted to the right on the 12Z run, and this might turn northwest into a weakness in the sub-tropical ridge late this week. For now looks like more of an open-Atlantic storm, or maybe one that gets close to the U.S. east coast. The system will also be fighting some dry and hostile upper air winds on the journey this week as well. Way early in the game so stay tuned....

Will make this one short... need to play some catch up. We will record a new WeatherBrains podcast tonight, and that should be posted early tomorrow morning. David Black has another interesting guest lined up this week... the topic will be the tropics. The next map discussion video will be posted by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow!

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

http://www.jamesspann.com/

I have a love-hate relationship with summer. In my youth, it was the best season. No school, hanging out at the beach, spending time with friends. I rarely knew the time or the day of the week. Life was carefree, and I never stopped to think about the weather being hot. I mean, c'mon, summer in Alabama SHOULD be hot.

In my "old age", summer has become my least favorite season. Too hot. The weather doesn't change much, and saying "hot and humid with scattered afternoon storms" gets old after a few weeks. Especially after three months!

But, even at this phase of life I can find great positive elements of the summer season. Especially through the eyes of my children. Quite frankly I need to quit being so selfish and remember that plenty of people love summer, especially kids. Just like I did years ago. And, they don't have as much summer to enjoy as I did due to the new school schedules; most systems begin the new year this week. Our nine year old begins fourth grade on Wednesday. For kids, summer is too short. For us that have been around the block a time or two, life is too short. I guess the point of all of this is to suggest we quit complaining about hot weather and simply be thankful we have a new day and a new week to enjoy. Every day is a gift, even the hot ones. And yes, summer is supposed to be hot!

Last week, I was simply a media consumer during my vacation, and I was blown away by the media hyperbole on weather right now. In the airports yesterday in newsstands I saw National Geographic has procliamed on the front page there is "no end in sight" to killer hurricanes. Wow! And, local media is going nuts with the hot weather. I hear words like "killer", "deadly", and "historic" when they describe the current hot weather. Quite frankly, this hot weather doesn't even come close to the REALLY hot years in the 20s, the 30s, the 50s, and 1980. After using the media last week you might think the world is about to end. I continue to have great fear that nobody will be listening to us when we really do have life-threatening weather. My concern is growing, and I can only hope our readers here know that I am doing by best to cut through the hype and speak the truth. Pick your source of weather information carefully.

OFF THE SOAPBOX: Better move on to business so this won't be too long. I expect lots of folks to re-join us this week as the summer vacation season is just about over; TV and Internet ratings are always relatively low during June, July, and early August while school is out (unless we have big tropical weather issues). The numbers usually begin to rise quickly beginning this week... so welcome back.

VIDEO: For those of you who have been away, we are now producing the daily map discussion video in QuickTime format (.mov files). If you use Internet Explorer, you will have to wait for the entire file to download (a minute or two) before it plays. If you use Firefox or any other browser (like Opera), the video will begin to play immediately (yet another great excuse to dump Internet Explorer). If you want to view the video full-screen, you might want to use the iTunes version. Just click on the video box in iTunes and you can size it any way you want. If you are new to our blog and the family of Internet products, we normally produce two daily map discussion videos during the week; the morning video is usually loaded by 6:30 a.m., and the afternoon video is ready by 3:30 on both the web and on iTunes. This discussion is a great way to get a quick weather briefing; we show lots of weather graphics, including computer model output, so you can see the "why" behind our forecast.

We still produce the regular Internet exclusive "webcasts", much like the weather segments you see on ABC 33/40 News, four times a day, and those are still in Windows Media format (.wmv files).

You can get a direct link to the video files on our sister site:

http://www.jamesspann.com/

MORE HEAT: Yesterday's high in Birmingham was 94 degrees... not that far above "normal" values for August in Alabama. We should peak in the mid 90s just about every day this week, with upper 90s in the hotter spots (especially the northwest corner of the state). I think the cooler than normal summers over the past five years have lulled us to sleep; it should be hot in Alabama in July and August!

ALWAYS A CHANCE: This time of the year, you are bound to have a few showers or storms on the radar during the afternoon hours every day. We think the ones today should be few and far between due to warm air aloft. The coverage of afternoon showers and storms should go up a bit by mid-week as a weak surface front approaches from the north, and the air aloft becomes slightly colder (meaning a more unstable atmosphere) thanks to the upper air ridge shifting to the west.

LONG RANGE: The GFS is advertising lower heights, lower daytime temperatures, and fairly decent coverage of scattered showers and storms late this week and over the weekend, but it often goes a little overboard. A typical summer broad-brush I think is the best solution for now; we can fine tune the forecast down the line. As I often write here, it is very hard to define mesoscale weather changes more than a day or two in advance in the summer. And, synoptic changes are often very subtle.

TROPICS: I had lots of e-mail from frantic people last week letting me know I had better be telling people Chris was going to become a major, dangerous hurricane that would threaten the Gulf coast. So much for that idea... I think the media weather hype has come people whipped into a frenzy.

We have a nice looking wave this morning in the central Atlantic, about halfway between the Lesser Antilles and the coast of Africa, around 12N and 42W. Looks like this one has a good chance to become a tropical depression today as it moves to the west/northwest. Most of the models take this one into the eastern Caribbean in four to five days.... we will keep an eye on it. Too early to determine if this will ultimately turn northwest and north (remaining in the open Atlantic, or getting close to the U.S. Atlantic coast), or it will keep coming west-northwest. While the system could grow into a hurricane down the line, it will have to fight dry air and hostile upper air winds at times on the journey.

Looks like the African wave train is cranking up... I also notice the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) seems to be headed toward zero, which might mean the long awaited tropical season is about to wake up. It will be very interesting to watch developments in coming days and weeks.

WEATHER PARTY: Don't forget to bookmark our new site:

http://www.weatherparty.com/

When you register, you can submit weather related links (ANYTHING related to weather, and vote on links that have been submitted. The most popular stories wind up on the front page. It has become a big part of my daily web briefing. Be sure and check it out... it is a real treasure trove of weather information.

Sorry I was so long winded this morning... I will have the next map discussion video posted by 3:30 today!

At 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, August 7, 1980, powerful Hurricane Allen was located 85 miles north northeast of Cozumel, Mexico. The advisory from the National Hurricane Center said it all: ...EXTREMELY SEVERE HURRICANE ALLEN CONTINUES TO STRENGTHEN... I found a copy of the actual teletype copy of the detailed vortex data message that was transmitted from the NOAA aircraft at 12:42 pm CDT. The central pressure in the hurricane had dropped to 899 millibars! This made it the second strongest hurricane observed in the Atlantic up until that time.

It was a storm worthy of the headlines. The Houston Post screamed “Hurricane Allen roars into Gulf” in 48 point type. The Birmingham News said “Allen rivals 1935 storm in intensity.” The News also said, “’Frederic Fever’ has Mobile on edge.” Along the Alabama Gulf Coast, it had been less than a year since Hurricane Frederic roared ashore on September 12, 1979. As early as Wednesday, civil defense officials along the Alabama coast had been making preparations in case the dangerous hurricane started to come north. In Mobile, residents were stocking up on plywood, flashlights, batteries, bottled water and canned goods. On Dauphin Island, where the 3.2 mile bridge off the island was still out after Frederic, a flotilla of boats was being marshaled in case an evacuation became necessary. Officials said that an evacuation of the island's 800 permanent residents and 1,000 summer visitors by boat would take sixteen hours under ideal conditions, and conditions were already becoming less than ideal over the Gulf of Mexico. On Wednesday night, a chopper ferrying oil workers to safety off Houma, Louisiana crashed in the storm tossed Gulf. Twelve people perished.

The official forecast called for the monstrous hurricane to move west northwestward across the Gulf of Mexico, eventually to impact the Texas coast. That is what happened, with the hurricane moving inland early on Sunday the 10th.