A Good Soaking Ahead

The Tuesday afternoon map discussion video is on the server:

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

Today's discussion is almost like a soap opera, if we use the storm names from the morning post.

Al is the easiest to forecast. Bob will brings a bothersome forecast situation to the northern quarter of the state this weekend, and is Hope lost?

We really do need to get Al through here before we can really deal with Bob and Hope with any super detail...

AL: Storm number one will bring a soaking rain to the state late tomorrow, tomorrow night, and early Thursday. The NAM extraction now shows a whopping 2.17" of rain for Birmingham from this system. A little thunder will be possible over south Alabama tomorrow night as the lifted index goes negative.

The bulk of the rain should come from about 4:00 p.m. tomorrow through 7:00 a.m. Thursday.

BOB: Storm number two rolls in here over the weekend. Looks like the deepest moisture will be over south Alabama, but some precipitation is surely possible over the northern counties of the state as well, mainly Saturday night. The 12Z GFS shows the freezing line at 5,000 feet near Birmingham, so we still could see a few snow flakes over the northern part of the state from this system.

Still looks like the best chance of snow flakes will be along and north of U.S. 278, or north of a line from Hamilton to Cullman to Gadsden Saturday night and early Sunday. Precipitation in this region should be relatively light. We will fine tune all of this once Al is out of the way.

Sunday and Monday should be pretty cold in the wake of the system. We will struggle to get out of the 30s on Monday; the GFS MOS has a high of 41 for Birmingham. And, that usually has a warm bias.

HOPE: You know, in the event the wave that will be Bob and the wave that will be Hope phase up, guess we will be dealing with Bob Hope?

The 12Z European is trending toward the GFS... with a solution that backs off on the idea of a major winter storm for the deep south. However, you can't ignore the strong wave rotating through here on Tuesday. The GFS is pretty dry and really isn't spitting out much precipitation (although the MOS has a POP of 53 percent for Tuesday). I still think the idea of a third wave bring a wintry weather threat to parts of the deep south Tuesday or Wednesday of next week still has some merit. In my opinion, hope is not lost just yet.

Look for the next map discussion video here by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow... and be sure and read J.B.'s posts below about December weather in years past. Amazing stuff...
Posted by rusty Pitts  
on December 13, 2005, 3:02 pm
Ok James...Where is the suspenders?? Its casual day...ok ...Al, Bob and Hope??? I thought the alphabet went ....ABCDEFG then you get to H..... where did Chris, DALE, ERICK, FANNY, and GREG go to ?? oh well..... We missed what the Europeans are thinking about Bob and Hope??

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Posted by  
on December 13, 2005, 3:14 pm
Hope is built...and hope is taken away. Maybe GFS isn't as bad as so many tend to think. I wouldn't discard its solution any more than any other model. The fact is none of the models are that good b/c they just have such little data to work with. I wonder if there were upper air measurements all over the world every 10 miles??? I wonder how close to perfect those kinds of readings would be? Hmmmmm

Anyway, I'm not upset by this news. The models could flip flop again and no doubt will. There's really no way to forecast winter weather here in Bham until pretty much right before it starts. Love alabama!!!!! At least things are kept interesting!

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Posted by  
on December 13, 2005, 3:36 pm
Well as for as the GFS it has no clue about winter weather here in the south. So I think the best thing to do is waite and see what will happen. And who knows we might just get something. I know one thing I am tired been danceing just about all day. My legs are about to fall off.

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Posted by  
on December 13, 2005, 4:29 pm
I think most everybody that posts here knows all that. We just like to hype up snow because we know it's such a rare event at all times in any year. Still got my dancing shoes and suspenders on.

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Posted by  
on December 13, 2005, 6:14 pm
theres the spirit chris!! so do i!!

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