Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Some Rain Tomorrow, Then Clear and Cool Through the Weekend

Wednesday (High 63, Low 52): Overcast, cool, and rather breezy. Periods of rain are likely throughout the day and night.

Thursday (High 64, Low 54): Mostly sunny and cool. An isolated shower may linger in the morning. 

Friday (High 63, Low 42): Sunny. Cool.

Saturday (High 66, Low 38): Sunny.

Sunday (High 69, Low 43): Mostly sunny.

Monday (High 71, Low 48): Partly to mostly sunny.

Tuesday (High 72, Low 56): Partly to mostly cloudy with a 40% chance of thunderstorms. 

Here at 7 PM it is 54 degrees in Cullman. Ain't that a novelty? 

The dewpoint is 50, making the relative humidity 88%. Winds are calm but have been light from the North/Northeast today. The pressure is 30.08 inches and rising slowly. 

Our High today was 72, and our Low this morning was 46. 





We're under a ridge of high pressure for now, but our weather pattern remains active and dynamic, like you expect in November. Or maybe those words are just fun to use tonight. 

Even down around the Gulf Coast, what rain there is, is light and sporadic, another fun word to use tonight. But we just had a cold front pass through the other day, you might have noticed it raining a few nights ago before this cooler and drier air kicked in. For the slow guy in the back of the room, that's what the blue line with the triangles shows on the weather maps, a cold front. So we're enjoying the aftermath of a cold front at the moment, which I would bet is better than the aftermath of some of the hurricanes we had this year. Though I'm not wishing for one up this way to prove it. 



Tomorrow is going to be quite a contrast from today. We've got a trough and another front coming through, and it looks rainy. 


The center of low pressure is closer to the Gulf Coast, and if this system produces any stronger storms, that's where they should be. Places like Eastern Louisiana, Southern Mississippi, and over to Mobile, Alabama do have a very low risk of a storm or two reaching severe limits, the main threat being damaging winds. 

And in November, you do have to keep an eye on that. 

Around here, it just looks like a rainy, breezy day, with a High near 63. The morning should be about 53-54. On second thought, I'm going to forecast 53 or even 52 since I remember that we are already down to 54 right now, while the night is still young. 

But tomorrow and tomorrow night, periods of rain are likely under overcast skies. And it will be breezy, probably not enough to need a wind advisory, but one of those days/nights if you've got stuff on your porch that blows around easily, might wanna' fetch 'em before the breeziness starts. 

Or you could always be like my neighbor and wait on the next tornado threat before you bring stuff in. One time she called me during a Tornado Warning in the spring-time, and I told her where to get in the house to be safe. And she apparently ignored that and said, "Well what about my lawn chair? Do ya' think it could blow away? Should I bring it in?" 

Life is full of good belly-laughs if we only look for them. I may not be a wise man, but I have learned that over the years. 

Speaking of which, Dana Carvey has added to his repertoire of Joe Biden impressions with some Elon Musk impressions lately. I'm glad that lovable nut is still around and doing his thing. Although I have to say that the situation makes me nostalgic, as I vaguely recall seeing that George Bush accepted the lampoon with more grace back in the day. And come to think of it, Elon didn't even make President. He just thinks he should be . . . I guess. A man brilliant enough to finally get electric cars going in the mainstream can learn to take a joke. He'll come around. 

And if he doesn't, I guess that just gives Dana more material. 



The rain should quickly come to an end Thursday morning, mainly an isolated shower hanging around in the morning hours. It'll be mostly sunny, and the winds will calm down. High should be about 64, Low in the mid-50's. 



By Friday as high pressure settles in again, we'll have much more of a temperature gradient between morning and evening, with a lot of radiational cooling Thursday night. We'll be sunny and start the day Friday in the lower 40's and only warm to the lower 60's. 

So Fall is finally here. Those calendars will no longer be lying to ya'. Whether you've got digital or paper, or even interesting paper like one of those old swimsuit calendars. 

Of course if you've got one that's 10 or 20 years old, that might still throw ya' off, but look, I can't cover everything here. Let's get on with the weather since that's really what I'm here for . . . 

But you know, some o' these guys like Ryan Hall say they're in it for "weathertainment." And once in a while, I just like to remind people how it's done, how to be funny and charming . . . well . . . maybe not so charming . . . but if you're not laughing already . . . c'mon . . . ya' know ya' want to. You'll give in eventually. And your belly will thank you. 

If you're hearing voices coming out of your belly . . . please call the mental health crisis line at . . . eh, I don't have the number. Again that's outside my area of expertise. 

Where were we on the weather? 



That upper-level ridge of high pressure will majorly amplify (I lifted that fancy phrase from the National Weather Service in Huntsville's fine forecast discussion) as it moves to the East on Saturday. And we'll see another sunny day down here in North Alabama, High in about the mid-60's or so, the Low maybe even dipping into the upper 30's with such dry air and nearly ideal cooling conditions overnight. 

Well technically the trough will amplify so majorly over the Mississippi River Valley and THEN move East. Details details . . . 

So for any of my obsessive-compulsive readers . . . darn, I should have given the exact temperatures above instead of rounding to the nearest whole number for the High and Low. But hey, aren't you glad at least the worst of that coronavirus outbreak is over with? Not even that crazy chick who made a video of herself licking a toilet seat to prove her absolute bravery . . . really did it. No, she sanitized it before turning the camera on, so the whole performance was basically like a Criss Angel magic trick. 

I just used a wrong word there, "darn." There is a girl in my family tree who gets really offended by the word I should have used, which is "dadgum." So . . . dadgum, I should have given exact temperatures instead of rounding. 



Then Sunday it's basically the same pattern, could see a few fair-weather clouds coming back, but mostly another sunny day, the High approaching 70 and the Low about 40 or so, lower 40's. 



Then on Monday, we'll have a cold front moving through the Plains. It will need to be monitored for severe thunderstorm potential. Looks like a deep upper-level trough with a negative tilt shaping up. Around here we'll stay mostly sunny, but definitely a few clouds coming back into the picture, High near 70 and the Low rebounding into the upper 40's. 



After that, we get into some model madness. The GFS is showing a dry day here on Tuesday, which I doubt is going to turn out to be true. This morning, it was showing this system moving our way faster than the ECMWF, as I recall. I didn't post about it, but I briefly looked at it. 

By the way, that tropical cyclone you see is not one of the GFS's wild goose chases. This time, it knows what it's talking about. But still, seven days in advance, I wouldn't put much stock in an exact track. 

We'll get to that shortly. 


But first, I think the European model has a better handle on this front moving into the Southeast region. Since the situation is unclear, for now will only mention a chance of scattered showers and storms on Tuesday, a High of about 70 or so, the Low in the 50's. 

And because of the uncertainty in the extended forecast, I'm choosing not to do a 10-day outlook this time. I was going to try it again, but it would be a disservice to you, the readers. I glanced at a couple of the TV stations that still do 10-day-outlooks as just par for the course, and they don't know any more about it than I do, far as I can see. At best they're making an educated guess, but it's more of a guess than it's educated. And that line, I lifted from Gerald Miller, hope I'm remembering his name right, who has done the weather on 105.7 FM, the only good country music station left around here that I know of. If a country station doesn't play Johnny Cash, I got no use fer 'em. 

And that line I lifted from . . . well . . . it's a combination of a joke of my own and something an aunt of mine said about her sister-in-law, who was a Quaker. But that's another story. And this is not the place for it. 

I did think of her yesterday since her husband was a war veteran. 

Some people reading this might remember the Veterans Day Outbreak of 2002. I used to know a woman who lived through it, as in, she was actually in a house that blew up in one of the tornadoes. She and her friends only had minor injuries, and they were going what they should, sheltering in a bathroom. But it was a really harrowing experience for her, as you'd expect. The tornado was rated F-3. This was before the Fujita/Pearson scale got all "enhanced", so people started sticking an "E" before the F-rating. Here is a page on the event from Birmingham and also one from the Huntsville NWS office. It was Birmingham issuing the warnings that night since the Huntsville office was not operational again until the next year. 

Which leads me to the excellent Weatherbrains podcast episode last night, where James Spann interviewed none other than John Gordon, the main man responsible for getting us a National Weather Service office in Huntsville again, teamed up with Bud Cramer for that. He serves the folks in Kentucky now. They talked about a lot of stuff, but one thing I've always liked about his outreach is that he's noticed that heat is our #1 weather killer these days. And wants to do something about it. A lot of people don't realize that if they leave someone in the back seat of a hot car even for a quick shopping trip, it can be a deadly mistake. It's one of those weather hazards that people don't pay enough attention to. And all it takes is a moment's thought to prevent tragedies like that. 

Now fortunately it's not hot around here anymore this year, but we're still in moderate drought conditions. This rain will help. 

The National Weather Service in Nashville is doing Weather101 classes, and they are free to take online, so if you know anybody who would like to stay a free class about any of the subjects you see at that link, please let 'em know. 



A tropical cyclone is trying to form over the next day or two in the Western Caribbean Sea. It will bring heavy rains to Jamaica and Haiti. And the rest of us will keep an eye on what it does after it gets a defined center, and the computer models are working with good observation data from within the storm. 

You may have noticed above, the GFS and ECMWF were picking up on this thing. It is probably going to meander down there a while before moving into the Gulf of Mexico. And if we've learned anything from the last tropical system down there, or maybe more like the the last two, it's better to wait and see than to jump the gun assuming that you know what's going to happen with it. We'll have better forecasts on this thing once it does develop a clearly defined center, aircraft can take really good observations, and the computer models can crunch those up . . . then human forecasters can sort out and make sense of all that mathematical crunching. 


Rainfall amounts around here will probably average about a half-inch to one inch over the next seven days. 


A major cooldown and change in the weather pattern is expected some time later next week, but it's too soon to nail down the specifics, even the exact timing of it. 


And as I was getting ready to post this, I can see why Elon Musk is strutting around like a banty rooster lately. Hey, but seriously, congratulations to him. I've taken some rides in those cars he invented, and they are amazing. Now if they only had a tape and CD deck like the old junkers I've driven around. He can consider that a suggestion for future upgrades if he should ever stumble across this. 

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