It’s another beautiful May midday across Central Alabama with mainly clear skies and plenty of sunshine. Clouds are continuing to stream across the northern parts of North Alabama, but it looks to be all dry across the radar. Temperatures at 11:00 am were in the lower 70s to the lower 80s already. Birmingham was at 79 degrees. Montgomery was leading the way as the warm spot at 82 degrees. The cool spot was Haleyville at 73 degrees.
Today, the high temperatures will reach the very warm category. Just in case if you wanted to know my categories, I’ll break it down for you…
NASTY COLD … 32 degrees and less
COLD … 33-39 degrees
CHILLY … 40-49 degrees
VERY COOL … 50-59 degrees
COOL … 60-69 degrees
MILD … 70-79 degrees
WARM … 80-84 degrees
VERY WARM … 85-89 degrees
HOT … 90-94 degrees
NASTY HOT … 95+ degrees
Your categories are probably different than mine and that is OK. We’ll have plenty of sunshine throughout the rest of today and maybe a brief shower or two bringing some light rain amounts to the extreme western parts of the area during the latter part of the afternoon hours. Afternoon highs will be in the “very warm” category, reaching the mid to upper 80s. You may see a few locations in the southeastern parts of Central Alabama briefly hit 90 degrees.
For tonight, any showers will have dissipated by sunset and we’ll end up with a very nice night with mainly clear skies. Overnight lows will only fall into the lower to mid-60s. The urban heat island effect may keep the larger cities of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery warmer than the surrounding locations.
A disturbance that is located over the southern parts of the Florida Peninsula and over the Bahamas will likely become a tropical or subtropical depression sometime during the weekend. The National Hurricane Center is sticking with a 70% chance this organizes into a depression within the next 5 days. This will have no impact on Central Alabama and forecast models have this moving northeast and away from the East Coast throughout the first half of next week. Here is the latest Tropical Weather Outlook from the NHC:
An area of cloudiness and thunderstorms located over the Straits of Florida is forecast to spread northeastward during the next day or two. Environmental conditions are expected to become conducive for development, and this system is likely to become a tropical or subtropical depression or storm this weekend when it is located near or north of the northwestern Bahamas. The system is forecast to move generally northeastward over the western Atlantic early next week. Regardless of development, the disturbance is expected to bring locally heavy rainfall and gusty winds to portions of southeastern Florida and the central and northwestern Bahamas over the next couple of days.
Central Alabama Weather 