Rainy period takes hold

Current radar imagery shows the low over the state of Alabama. We are on the moist side of the front and will be there for the next couple of days. Here's the latest radar loop:

As the loop shows above (TIME SENSITIVE! (10:45 AM EDT)); there is another batch of rain heading our way. Also, another piece of energy is providing rain for southern Georgia, east of Interstate 75. This band of rain will continue to lift north and MAY scrape our eastern counties of Talbot, Taylor, Schley and Sumter. The bulk of the rain effecting our area will be coming from the south and west.

There's a nice conveyor belt of moisture moving in from the Gulf of Mexico, as illustrated by all the rain on radar. This shows up nicely in this morning's Peachtree City, GA sounding:

The precipitable water, or PW, is 1.74, while Birmingham has a PW of 1.92 so there's PLENTY of moisture to work with! The only thing stopping all this water in the atmosphere from raining out is a significant lifting mechanism. The NWS from Peachtree City, GA (FFC) indicated from their morning discussion that a lot of the rain this morning was from isentropic upglide, or air moving toward a region of the same density. For example; warm air, less dense, riding over cold air, more dense, to be with the other pockets of warm air creating light to moderate precipitation. This will be the case for another couple of hours until we get the sun to help destabilize the air. Speaking of the sun, it's peeking out to our west so we'll destabilize some this afternoon:

That's why I'm calling for a few isolated thunderstorms, below severe levels, later on today.

Taking a quick look at the rest of the week shows the moisture sticking around until at LEAST Friday morning! That's allowed me to forecast off and on rain showers for the duration of the workweek. Originally, I was forecasting between 0.50" to 1.00" for our area. That seems a tad high right now so I've backed it down to 0.25" to 0.75" for the immediate viewing area as there's been a trend to be drier than forecast, locally. Those reading elsewhere in the southeast; I anticipate most of us will managing to eek out at least 0.50" though, higher elevations could see 1.00"+.

Oh! Here's the 00Z GFS showing the cut-off low I mentioned last week:

This thing is going to SIT here for a few days before finally being kicked to the northeast. This will result in a slightly warmer weekend than originally thought but still below average with highs in the low 80s.

Thank you!

David Reese