Map Discussion Video for Saturday, July 16

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

Glad the weekend is here. Just last weekend I was on the Gulf coast awaiting the impact of Dennis. Dennis sure kept us guessing right up to the last minute. But this weekend our attention turns to Hurricane Emily.

Emily is a very dangerous hurricane - a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained wind estimated at 140 mph at this writing. Current projections take Emily south of Jamica, across the western Caribbean, across the northern portion of the Yucatan peninsula and into the southwestern Gulf of Mexico. Computer models have begun to diverge on their solutions. The various models have had surprisingly small spreads in most of the runs through Emily's life, but the latest run shows a fairly broad spread as the tendency is to shift the track southward a bit. That shift would certainly be welcome for the people of South Texas but definitely unwelcome for the people in Mexico. There was not a current run of the FSU MM5 model that James showed yesterday which was a major departure from the other models, so I can't say what it's doing with Emily.

Over Alabama and the southeastern US, we stay very wet with high likelihood of showers again today and tomorrow. Precipitable water values are over 2 inches in some locations - 2.07 inches at BMX. As high pressure builds stronger across the Southeast this week, we can expect to see a decrease in the areal coverage of showers into the mid and late week, but showers can't be completely ruled out.

Temperatures will climb back into the lower 90s as we see fewer clouds and showers and as the high pressure aloft becomes stronger.

Have a great weekend.

-Brian-