Let's Talk...

With the Monday Night Football game giving me some badly needed time, lets talk weather...

Thanks to J.B. for the very nice travel forecast below. Please check it out if you will be on the road, or in the air during the next few days. I will warn the Miss Molly fans that J.B. will be taking the next three days off; Bill Murray and myself will be writing the afternoon forecast packages; J.B. returns on Friday.

I will be taking next week off myself; tis the season for some down time. My last week off was back in August. Time for a breather before we get into the real busy season... January through May is wall to wall with us due to everything from school programs, to the annual Storm Alert tour, to winter storm and severe weather events. By the way, we will be announcing the Storm Alert tour schedule in early January. It will be nice to have the newest member of our team with us, Jason Simpson. This guy is great, he goes on the air the first week of January (he will be working the weekday morning shift).

The new 00Z model data is rolling into the office as I speak at light speed. The GFS takes the surface low on the mid-week storm now from near Baton Rouge to Montgomery and on to Asheville, NC. If this is correct, severe storms should be limited to the southeast third of Alabama. We still should see some pretty decent rain amounts here. That track also might be more favorable for accumulating snow Wednesday night and Thursday morning in places like Memphis, Nashville, Tupelo, and even Muscle Shoals in extreme northwest Alabama. Winter storm watches could ber required for some of these places.

We will still mention the chance of light snow or flurries here Thursday morning, but it should not be a big issue as the main storm pulls away from us.

CHRISTMAS SNOW UPDATE: How about the Monday afternoon discussion from our friends up in Washington... headline reads:

...POTENTIAL STILL EXISTS FOR A MAJOR SNOWFALL FOR PORTIONS OF THE GULF STATES AND SOUTHEAST FOR CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY...

That will get your blood pumping. Read the whole thing here:

http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/discussions/pmdepd.html

But, the new 00Z GFS is somewhat of a bummer for snow lovers as it keeps the Gulf storm too far south to impact north and central Alabama. It even keeps the deepest moisture south of Mobile and Dothan.

I still don't think you can rule out some snow over parts of Alabama late Friday, Friday night, and early Christmas morning. But, if it happens, it sure looks like the best chance of getting snow on the ground still comes south of Montgomery. Maybe even south of Dothan!

The ETA model (only goes out to 84 hours) doesn't look very favorable on the final panels for a big Gulf storm.

HMMM... someone just sent me a still image captured of me with my 12/25 snow cover map during our 6:00 news tonight... the image was posted over on a New Orleans weather forum (WWL-TV)! Hard to keep secrets these days.

Not sure I really trust model output until the mid-week storm gets organized and moves on through. Lets take it one day at a time...