A Trio Of Trouble

The Tuesday morning map discussion video is on the server:

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

I encourage you to scroll down and read Dr. William Gray's comments... finally a voice of reason in a sea of "global warming" insanity.

And, beware... I am writing this on less than three hours sleep courtesy of a LONG Monday night football game last night on ABC 33/40. It didn't get home until after 1:00 a.m. You might want to use this with caution! But, then again, I rarely get enough sleep anyway....

Three storms, or potential storms, on the horizon. Lets take them one at a time.

STORM NUMBER ONE (lets name the storms this morning... who not... lets call storm number one AL): Al will bring a cold, soaking rain to Alabama tomorrow and Thursday. Yep, a nasty little ice event should unfold for the western Carolinas in the wedge, and there is no doubt the colder air could reach the Alabama/Georgia border, but even for Cherokee and Cleburne counties we don't expect any freezing rain problems.

Temperatures will be very tough to deal with tomorrow; the high in Cedar Bluff might be 39, while Tuscaloosa reaches 55. And, some pretty decent rain totals are likely; models are suggesting amounts between 1.00 and 1.50 inch here. There might even be enough instability over south Alabama for some thunder; the lifted index goes negative down there.

The rain will end early in the day Thursday as yet another coastal low rolls up the eastern seaboard of the U.S. Looks like we stay in the 40s all day Thursday with nice CAA going on (cold air advection).

STORM NUMBER TWO (how about BOB for this one): Bob will arrive this weekend and will bring some headaches for weather forecasters, and drivers over parts of the deep south. You can't ignore cold air seeping in here from the big Arctic high to the north, and critical thickness values over far north Alabama.

Looks like the best chance of snow from Bob will come along and north of U.S. 278 Saturday night and Sunday morning. This is north of a line from Hamilton to Cullman to Gadsden. For now, the I-20 corridor will probably deal with a cold rain.

But, longtime readers know the deal. Lets take the storms ONE AT A TIME. We need to get through Al before we really can forecast Bob with any accurate detail.

STORM NUMBER THREE (HMMM... lets use HOPE... need a female name in the mix, and this is what the snow lovers will have when it comes to the system): Hope doesn't even show up on the 06Z run of the GFS... but the European offers great promise for Hope sometime next week in the Tuesday-Wednesday time frame.

Actually the 06Z GFS does show a strong wave diving down the back side of the trough, but no phasing with the southern stream on the 06Z run. The 00Z run does show a significant winter storm threat for the deep south centered on Wednesday of next week.

We don't want to get hung up on run to run changes so early in the game. I still believe that Hope will indeed bring a wintry weather threat to much of the deep south. The key word is THREAT here. No forecast yet... just too early in the game.

I have some brilliant weather people together on a constant Instant Message (IM) conference... I will pick their brains this morning, take a nap, review the 12Z guidance, and have the next discussion and video here by 3:30 this afternoon....