Tuesday Afternoon March 16, 2010
Forecaster: J.B. Elliott
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THE ALABAMA STORY: I cannot believe that March is half gone. Do you get the idea that clouds have decided to make their home over Alabama? It sure seems that way recently. The wind insists on flowing into the state from the NW and that is keeping us cool. At least it is not a major cold wave with freeze damage, neither is it tank top or shirtless weather. The old thermometer will be rather steady over the next several days, especially over at night. Lows will be consistently in the 43 to 45 degree range. Looking way down the road into next week, we will have some colder nights. This is due to a rather fast-moving cold front that will reach West Alabama late Saturday night and move through most of the state by early Sunday morning.
HOW ABOUT RAIN: Only teasing amounts Wednesday and Thursday with little or none on Friday. Probably our better chance of showers and maybe even a thunderstorm will come late Saturday night and through the pre-dawn hours Sunday. Even then, most of our model guidance does not indicate a great deal of rain—more like one-third of an inch. That could change in the next few days before the front arrives.
SPRING BREAK: I remember taking spring break once with an overnight stay at Lake Payne in NE Hale County. No big trips to Florida or the Great Smoky Mountains in those days. If you are still going to go the Alabama/NW Florida coast for the rest of the week, Wednesday should be mostly cloudy, a mix of sun and clouds on Thursday, mostly sunshine on Friday, a few showers by Saturday afternoon with showers and thunderstorms becoming more numerous Saturday night. Not the greatest spring break temperatures in the world with lows at night in the 40s and highs mostly in the 60s.
ROAMING FAR AND WIDE: The people in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States will never, ever forget this winter. Major problems over the last couple of days in the NE. Rivers are out of their banks and major flash flooding has been reported in a number of cities. These latest storms over the last few days dumped 10.33 inches of rain on Woburn, Massachusetts. High winds also uprooted trees. They did not need this after all that record snow a few weeks ago.
Now the flood threat also involved the Far North. In Fargo, North Dakota they started a program called Bucks for Bags this morning. They are inviting hundreds of volunteers to fill 1 million sandbags by March 17 as the Red River of the North threatens to crest 20 feet above flood stage. Elsewhere, the coldest in the lower 48 this morning was 10 at Stanley, Idaho. The coldest in Alaska was 37 below zero at good old Deadhorse where the wind chill was 57 below. There are 79 inches of snow on the ground at Whittier, Alaska and 68 inches at Valdez.
MY TINY CORNER OF THE WORLD: Little Miss Molly is as spoiled as a little dog can be. I contributed to that greatly and I do not mind at all. She and I have a language of our own and I believe she understands almost everything I say. But she is also stubborn in some ways. She wants to go on the north part of the walking track the first two times each day and for our mid-afternoon walk she insists on the south track. She now has little boyfriends with a new one, a Dacshund, only two doors away. And of course there is Dino and Bo, a lot smaller than Molly and Jo-Jo who we do not see as much anymore. Life goes on.....