A Brighter Day

The Friday morning video is on the server:

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

Another busy day today; off to Tuscaloosa shortly to speak to the students at Holy Spirit school. And, a big THANK YOU to everyone who came to our Storm Alert 2005 show in the Oxford Civic Center last night. Over 1,000 people showed up and we had a blast.

Here is a list of coming weather attractions:

*The sun will be out in full force today with temperatures nearing 60 degrees this afternoon. A very nice late winter day. We should go into the 60s tomorrow with a partly sunny sky.

*We should have some rain at times Sunday afternoon into Monday of next week, followed by a sharp change to colder temperatures on Tuesday and Wednesday. Check out that European thermal profile on Tuesday. Highs drop into the 40s, and if the sky can clear we have a good shot of going into the 20s Wednesday morning. The pattern for the first half of March continues to favor colder than normal temperatures over the eastern half of the country, including the deep south.

*Model output is pretty muddy on the storm system toward the middle or end of next week. Most models now supress the storm pretty far south in the Gulf of Mexico, with only light precipitation up here. But, we are still early in the game and there is little run to run consistency.

The GFS tries to bring a northern stream system in here around Sunday March 6 with some snow potential. There will continue to be a wild array of storms and waves in the March 5-15 time frame, and trying to resolve details this far in advance is not wise. All we can tell you is that the pattern favors cold and unsettled weather.

Lots of questions about why the "Weather Channel" and others are forecasting mild weather during the time when we are talking about cold weather. I guess they need to respond to that, but I can assure they do not have a single full time employee forecasting specifically for Alabama. Most of that stuff is probably automated based on model output statistics, and those MOS products skew toward climatology in the longer range. Pretty useless during periods of anomalous temperature regimes. I am not a critic of the Weather Channel, but my point is that they simply don't have a staff of 50 meteorologists assigned to every state in the union. We have a team of six meteorologists forecasting the weather on our staff, and it is all we can do to handle it correctly with all those people!

Sure, I can be dead wrong. Have been before, and I will be wrong again. But, my job here is to call it like I see it, not to conform to model output statistics. I have seen the GFS MOS be off as much as 30 degrees during very high amplitude patterns.

Back on I-20 this morning... headed west.

Posted by  
on February 25, 2005, 7:02 am
Thanks for clearing that up James! I too, often wondered why The Weather Channel had a much different forecast for us, and it was often way off.

Thanks for all the hard work you guys do, and for this really neat Blog. You guys are awesome!!

Reply to this comment
Posted by  
on February 25, 2005, 8:15 am
I can assure you that NO one on the Weather Channel staff came close to predicting what happened in March of 1993. ( For you new Alabamians, that was a blizzard!)
Kudos to James and his staff.....they make this stuff look simple, when in fact it is still a very difficult science.

Reply to this comment
Posted by w  
on February 25, 2005, 8:17 am
Are you kidding me???....Why in the freakin' world do you continue to mention the GFS at more than 7 days out???!!!???!!! It predicts a historic snowstorm %95 of the time at more than a week out. Is it for ratings that you do this???? I think I speak for most people when I say, "Tell me what's likely to happen, not what "could" happen in a million years."

Reply to this comment
Posted by  
on February 25, 2005, 8:32 am
hey "W", try to do better. Also James Spann will not respond back to you because you sent an anonymous entry into the Blog.

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Posted by Brett  
on February 25, 2005, 10:13 am
Hey "W"...well some forecasters like to mention TRENDS in these time frames. Looks like the GFS is showing cold and I believe that is exactly what we are going to get. Now the MOS numbers, I don't believe at all. I think they look at these TRENDS because that is how they eventually make a forecast. They don't mention it on LIVE television. but only to the insiders who are interested on the web. I know a few forecasters who pointed the great superstorm of '93 out several (7) days in advance. And you wonder why they look more than 7 days....

Reply to this comment
Posted by  
on February 25, 2005, 10:36 am
James himself acknowledges that model runs beyond 7 days are 'voodoo' and I believe that he only mentions these things to let people interested in weather in on the forecast possibilities. As a snow fan, I've been disappointed several times this winter that the model runs didn't pan out. But I think it's a testimony to the team's dedication that they make this info available at all. No one else provides viewers/readers with this much information (that I know of).

I moved from Birmingham to Decatur 2 years ago and I still check here first to get the lowdown on weather in Alabama before I go to local forecast sites.

Reply to this comment
Posted by  
on February 25, 2005, 1:18 pm
Hey W I think you need to chill out and I agree with the rest of you fully. I think the best thing to do is wait and see what will happen next week.

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Posted by   www
on February 25, 2005, 3:18 pm
Thanks for addressing that James. There are two sources and two sources only that I depend on for severe weather- James Spann 1st (since Winston Co. is in your coverage area) and Dan Satterfield out of Huntsville- the two best weather men during a mean storm. They explain details without "talking down to you". Keep up the great job.

Reply to this comment
Posted by Clay  
on February 25, 2005, 4:23 pm
W, man, take a chill pill! It is interesting to think of things that far in advance, to me. Yes, they aren't very certain, but this is the reason it is posted on a BLOG, not run on the 10:00 news! DUH! Thanks for the info, Mr. Spann. Oh, and W, watch and wait with the rest of us, or get a meteorology degree and do it better than James (not likely)

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Posted by   www
on February 25, 2005, 7:15 pm
Hey W, instead of a couple of snow ones get some brass ones and let James be able to talk back to you by e-mail. Everyone who looks daily at the models knows all the tales of storms they show. Eventually they will be right here in the south and the one time he does not mention it everyone will have a cow because they could not go to the grocery store for 24 hours. Anyway, good work James and we will cross out fingers for one snow!!!

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