Monday Morning QB

The Monday morning video is on the server:

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

Looking back at the Friday night/Saturday morning event for Alabama, I think the forecast worked out very nicely.

Here was the forecast discussion on the blog from last Thursday morning:

http://www.jamesspann.com/bmachine/wxtalk.php?id=278

No travel problems for 95 percent of our viewing area; you had to get over to the Georgia border counties (Cleburne, Randolph, and Chambers) to find significant bridge icing. No ice at all on road surfaces in those areas unless you were over 1,500 feet in elevation, like our pals Bill Castle and Jason Simpson on Mt. Cheaha. Enough ice on trees and lines for scattered power outages across those far eastern counties. Bad problems over the line in Georgia.

The warm soil temperatures were a big help (in the 44 to 47 degree range), and rain falling through the warm layer offset the evaporative cooling process right on time for Gadsden, Anniston, and Birmingham. All of this was exactly in line with our forecast package.

I will admit I was a little spooked Friday night when we saw that temperature drop from 40 to 33 in about one hour at our weather office in Riverchase, but it was steady as a rock at 33 degrees.

I still stand by the opinion that winter storm watches and warnings should be reserved for major events that call for real action, like preparing for extended power outages, airport shutdowns, and icy roads for multiple days. For most people, the Friday night/Saturday morning event was simply a cold wet period with some ice on exposed surfaces. I would indeed call it a winter storm for people in Cleburne, Randolph, and Chambers counties, but even in those areas it was a short term event. Far too many people hit the milk and bread lines Friday when it was not necessary. You call events like that a winter storm, and people won't listen when we have a real big time winter weather threat on our hands.

Much like the problem with severe thunderstorm warnings... for years I wanted to "raise the bar" on the severe thunderstorm criteria... we simply have too many severe thunderstorm warnings and people don't pay much attention to them.

Enough preaching and on to the future... split flow pattern means tough forecast. I had to introduce rain into the forecast for today simply because we have lots of rain on radar this morning! Some rain at times possible through mid-week, with the best coverage of rain on Wednesday.

You take some of the model data, and you can even see some wintry precipitation possibilities for Wednesday night for extreme north Alabama, but I don't like going wild with a forecast on Monday morning since I am coming in here without having looked at weather data too much over the weekend. Let me get settled in and we can discuss any idea on that later today.

A decent chance we finally see the sun on Friday and Saturday. Then, a significant storm moves through the southern stream in about one week with lots of rain here. The GFS does not show any phasing with the northern stream right now, but I don't trust it at all. And, I probably won't trust it this week.

Everything still looks on target for a big shot of cold air here in the February 10-12 time frame as the NAO spikes negative and a long wave trough forms over the eastern U.S. The details involving how we get there remain up in the air!