Mainly Dry Today With A Few Sprinkles Possible Early; Severe Storm Potential On Monday

TODAY
We’ll have mostly cloudy skies throughout the day today with a few sprinkles possible at times over the northern parts of the area during the morning. By afternoon, we could see a few breaks in those clouds to let a little sunshine through at times. Afternoon highs will be in the lower 50s to near 60 degrees across the area.

SUNDAY
Skies look to be mostly cloudy throughout much of the day on Sunday, but we could see some of those clouds move out for a little while during the latter half of the day. We’ll be dry with afternoon highs reaching the upper 50s to the upper 60s.

MONDAY
We’ll start off the day on Monday with mostly cloudy skies across the area but we’ll have a low stationed over Arkansas that will be bringing a strong cold front with that will move through setting the stage for the potential of strong to severe storms during the afternoon through the evening and late-night hours.

Ahead of the front, warm and moist air will be pulled into the area from the south that will begin to destabilize the atmosphere over Central Alabama. We could see some shower activity start as early as the mid to late morning hours over the western parts of the area, with the front beginning to move in during the late evening hours. Afternoon highs look to top out in the upper 60s to the mid-70s.

The Storm Prediction Center has nearly all of Central Alabama in a Slight Risk for severe storms throughout the day on Monday with the exception of the extreme eastern parts of the area. All modes of severe weather look to be possible: tornadoes, damaging winds up to 60 MPH, and hail up to 1-inch in diameter. At this point, the timing for strong to severe storms will be from 2:00 pm Monday afternoon to 2:00 am on Tuesday morning. The higher resolution models are just now starting to come into view, so we’ll have a better grasp on the timing and other details starting this evening.

Global models have been showing that we’ll have decent surface-based instability, strong shear, and higher helicity values in place over Central Alabama. It is just too early to know at this point if all of the activity will move through as a squall line or if we’ll have discrete supercells form out ahead of the squall line. We’ll keep you updated throughout the weekend.