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Welcome to the Multimedia Impact Briefing for Central Alabama. We will be discussing
the potential for severe weather Thursday evening through Friday morning.
The Storm Prediction Center has placed a rather large slight risk stretching all the way from
the Great Lakes southward to the Gulf of Mexico on their day
2 outlook for Thursday night into early Friday morning. This risk
has been outlined due to an upper level disturbance that will bring a cold front across the area.
As can be seen, almost all of Central Alabama is covered in
this outlook.
Looking at the severe weather probabilities for Thursday from SPC, note that locations
with the red area have a 30% chance of seeing severe weather within
25 miles. This enhanced area includes much of the northern and western
portions of Central Alabama. Locations in the yellow area have a 15% chance of seeing
severe weather within 25 miles.
Zooming in to just Central Alabama, a strong cold front will enter western Tennessee and
northern Mississippi during the afternoon on Thursday. A line of
strong to severe storms will be located just ahead of the front,
moving eastward with time. As the cold front moves over the state Thursday evening there
is a chance for severe thunderstorms across all of Central Alabama. At this time the primary
threat appears to be damaging straight-line winds in excess
of 60 mph along the line of thunderstorms. But, there will be enough
wind shear and instability in the atmosphere for the possibility of isolated tornadoes
as well. The highest threat area for damaging winds and isolated
tornadoes is highlighted in red. Storms will weaken some during the
overnight hours but severe storms will still be possible across all of Central Alabama.
The front should be pushing out of our southeast counties early
Friday morning. All of Central Alabama will have a risk of
seeing severe weather from Thursday evening northwest through Friday morning across the
southeast.
Again, the main threat with this system will be damaging straight line winds. An isolated
tornado along the line cannot be ruled out especially in the highlighted
area in the previous graphic. Hail remains a small threat
due to rather modest instability values. Flooding is almost a zero threat due to the speed of
the system.
The timing and severe threats are subject to change as we get closer to the event, so
stay tuned for the latest information. During rapidly evolving weather
situations, please view the most up-to-date information and
Graphicasts on our website, which is www.srh.noaa.gov/bmx. And as always, if you have any questions,
feel free to give us a call at 205-664-3010.