Pre-Church Briefing

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.