A Wild Week Ahead

Good morning and merry Christmas.

Morning video update is on the server:

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

This will be a wild week in the weather office... here are the issues on the table:

*Pre-Christmas storm Wednesday into early Thursday: Day 3 convective outlook from the Storm Prediction Center has central and south Alabama in a slight risk of severe thunderstorms! Pretty amazing; going from lows in the 10 to 15 degee range today into a warm and moist airmass with a chance of severe storms late Wednesday and Wednesday night. Not out of the question with the surface low moving from Lake Charles to Memphis to Cincinnati.

On the cold air side of the storm, some nice snow is likely in a band from northwest Tennessee and Arkansas to western Kentucky and parts of Indiana and Illinois. Indianapolis could really be slammed with heavy snow if the forecast track of the low is correct.

Yes, we might see some light snow or flurries on the back side of the storm as very cold air returns on Thursday morning, but it shouldn't amount to much. It is hard to get snow on the ground here in that kind of set-up.

*Christmas COLD!: The latest guidance has 11 degrees in Birmingham Christmas morning. This is certainly possible, especially if snow gets on the ground to the northwest of us after the mid-week storm. Snow or no snow, it will be very cold on Christmas day.

*Christmas SNOW: Ah, ye of little faith. Don't give up on the Gulf of Mexico system on Friday yet. Actually, it has been there all along, the models over the weekend just pushed it far to the south. The 06Z GFS has snow back over central and south Alabama Friday night and into early Christmas morning. Watch the video and you can see the GFS accumulated snow chart has 5 inches Christmas morning for places like Dothan, Greenville, Troy, Luverne, and Eufala! Some snow as far north as Shelby county.

We have an in-house conference this morning at 7:00... will get input from the other folks in the office and update here as needed. I will also be amending Bill's forecast package a bit to reflect the new guidance.

Time for a fresh cup of coffee...