Saturday Morning Thoughts

Clear and cold out there across Alabama this morning. Many locations in the 20s. There has been a little bit of fog repored in a few locations, especially over the Tennessee Valley of North Alabama.

The forecast is on track for today. Lots of sunshine and temperatures warming into the middle 50s.

Our next weather maker is located way up over the Upper Midwest. It is a cold front that will dive southward over the next 36 hours, making it well into Alabama by this time tomorrow.

Clouds should accompany the fronts arrival tonight and stick with us into part of Sunday. There could be a little light rain with and just behind the front. Sunday will be a blustery, cold and raw day with temperatures holding in the 30s along with a strong northwesterly wind. There could even be a few snow flurries, especially over Northeast Alabama. No accumulations are expected, but any heavier little bursts of snow could whiten the ground for a time over higher elevations.

Sunday night promises to be an extremely cold night with temperatures now pegged to be in the 12-22 range. The 06z (early morning) model output statistics from the GFS run showed 12 for the low at Birmingham. It has been showing that since yesterday. These type temperatures would be colder than last Tuesday night.

Putting the GFS in crystal ball mode out to Christmas:

The 06z run is less impressive with its snowfall potential for Alabama. It is wetter and holds onto the rain longer in the midweek time period. It still brings another low across the northern Gulf of Mexico on Christmas Eve. This run holds the best moisture further south and the best cold air further north, keeping them separated enough to head off a big snow event.

But, just as I cauitoned you last night, we will see run to run flip flopping with the models this far out and anything we talk about now for the end of the week is very low in confidence. You have to watch the trends from the models and try to envision what the atmospehere will actually be capable of doing at that time.

I still that that another Arctic airmass will be in place over the South by Christmas Eve and there will be a low in the Gulf. The position and movement of this low will be critical to whether we might have the experience of a White Christmas!