Comfortable June Weather

The Monday morning map discussion video is on the server:

http://www.jamesspann.com/

Thanks to the gang for allowing me a little down time... we run hard in the weather office from January through May, and June always offers a great oppportunity for a little rest. Tornado season is over, and the core of the hurricane season is still to come.

NICE JUNE DAY: Water vapor imagery this morning shows much drier air flowing into North Alabama this morning, and that should set up a very comfortable day for June in Alabama. Lots of sun, low humidity, and highs in the mid 80s. Temperatures will drop quickly tonight, and we should be in the mid 50s early tomorrow morning. You have to wonder if Valley Head can reach the upper 40s... it is sure possible. Tomorrow should be another dry day, but we will watch a disturbance coming at us from the northwest, down the backside of the eastern U.S. upper trough that is in place.

WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY: We will mention scattered showers and storms on both days. The GFS is hinting at the best coverage of showers and storms coming on Thursday, but understand models usually don't handle northwest flow storms very well in early summer. Temperatures will remain comfortable, many communities won't get out of the low 80s; not bad at all for June.

By Friday, scattered showers should thin out greatly as an upper air ridge begins to build, and the air aloft gets warmer.

WEEKEND PEEK: For now the weekend looks pretty good as we are looking at routine weather for June. Highs in the upper 80s, a good supply of sun, increasing humidity levels, and only a handful of widely scattered afternoon showers or storms both days. That pattern should hold into early next week.

LONG RANGE: The GFS is hinting at cooler than normal temperatures for Alabama for most of June. In fact, it brings a strong cold front through here around June 14 thanks to a strong upper trough supporting it, and a cool vortex sets up over the eastern U.S. in the June 15-17 time frame. The knee-jerk reaction is to say this is bogus, but I have been out of pocket for a while; lets look at future runs to see if that stays in place. If this happens to be correct, we will have a hard time getting about 90 degrees through June 20. Sounds good to me, but I am not sure I believe it yet.

TROPICS: The elongated cloud mass from Cuba across the Bahamas and into the Atlantic is not surface based, and tropical storm formation seems unlikely for a while. If the GFS is correct with the mean eastern U.S. trough for much of June, anything that forms over the Caribbean should shoot off to the northeast into the open Atlantic. I don't see any tropical troubles for the Gulf for the foreseeable future.

You can see some pictures from my Alabama Gulf coast run here:

http://www.jamesspann.com/bmachine/post/wxtalk/4676/

And, check out some images sent to us from our troops in the Middle East here:

http://www.jamesspann.com/bmachine/post/wxtalk/4679

I posted those at a fairly odd time while I was at the beach.

On the way back yesterday, I drove through a dandy of a thunderstorm over Chilton County yesterday afternoon. Traffic on I-65 was almost at a standstill due to the heavy rain. That was the only rain we saw during the entire trip; not a drop at the beach.

I will have the afternoon map video discussion posted by 3:30 today!