Twin States Weather Blog

Mixed Bag In The Weather...

... with a smoke and haze, a cold front with some rain chances, elevated fire danger later at the end of the week and weekend and "Barry" possibly forming in the Caribbean and Southern Gulf of Mexico late this month...

* A lot happening today in the weather. As I right this at around 4:30 isolated storms have popped in spots across Eastern and Central Mississippi and Western Alabama. These will pop up and not move much and will rain themselves out.

* Smoke/Hazy: Surface winds are blowing from the southeast and east (see my blog below) and are pulling smoke from the fires in South Georgia and Northern Florida over into our part of the world. Southeasterly winds will continue to pull smoke from the wildfires over Southern Georgia and Alabama into Eastern & Southeastern Mississippi and Western and Southwestern Alabama until the front kicks our winds to the north later this week. The smoke will cause very hazy conditions across the Twin States. There is a very slight chance of an isolated afternoon storm today.

* Cold front and somewhat better rain chances: A moderate cold front will work southward toward Mississippi and Alabama Wednesday bringing a round of showers and thunderstorms for the Twin States. At the moment, the models show a band along the front moving through both states and arriving around our area by the middle of the afternoon. There will be a slight cool down behind the front for the end of the week and weekend as the front will bring relative humidity down. This also will increase the fire danger threat for the late week and weekend. Models indicate rains from around 0.25 to 0.50"...

* Fire Danger: Despite the rain chances for midweek, cooler and dryer air will move into the Twin States late week and this weekend and will dry out the moisture that fell and lower relative humidities so the fire danger will be elevated. I should note the city of Meridian has once again been placed under a burn ban (see the news section of http://www.wtok.com)

* Tropics: If you read my blog from this morning about a "system" at the end of the month... not much chance. The GFS 12Z model still shows a system of some sort moving into the Southern Gulf of Mexico around the 29th and 30th of the month. Models have this feature moving northward right now. I will say we don't want to see anything major but a tropical depression with some good heavy rain would really make a dent in the severe drought for our area. I will note that models this far out are out in "voodoo land or the weather boonies" so it will be interesting to watch how this pans out. You can check things out to by checking out the models at the NCEP website at:

http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis/

The 0z and 12Z (7pm & 1PM CDT) GFS runs are the longer range models (going out 16 days). Click on the 4 panel charts and just choose a day and time in the left column. Once the page opens, surface precipitation forecasts are in the bottom left hand box of the 4 panels... just something for you to check out as well. These are the models we meteorologists look at every day for forecasting. There not always practical... but then again the science of meteorology is not either.

* We'll talk more about the forecast here in a bit on Newscenter 11 at 5:00 and later at 6:00 and 10:00PM... and back bright and early from 5:30 - 7:00 AM Tuesday morning on Good Morning Meridian.

Labels: Forecast Discussion

posted by Chris Whited @ 4:30 PM