Spotty Showers on the way

Good morning! Some of the night-owls or super early-risers were treated to the pitter patter of rain this morning! We picked up a quarter of an inch of rain between 1 and 5 in Columbus. Auburn, however, picked up a mere 0.04". This illustrates the spottiness of the showers we experienced overnight, and will be the case over the next 24 hours.


All of this rain is out ahead of a cold front moving through western Alabama this morning. It will bring MUCH cooler weather our way tomorrow afternoon. Until then, enjoy the low to mid 70s under a cloudy sky.

Alright, time to get a little technical. Here's the 500 mb vorticity map from the 00Z run for Dec. 6 for 7 AM this morning:  

This matches up fairly well with what's actually happening in the atmosphere. You see a postively tilted trough, imagine drawing a line from New Mexico to Wisconsin. It's like an x=y line, hence why it's a "positively" tilted trough. Now, here's a look at the 39 hour forecast, Wednesday afternoon:

That same trough has now gone negative, draw a line from Panama City, FL to Indianapolis, IN. This allows moisture to flow from the Gulf of Mexico into the Mid-Atlantic States. You'll also notice the red, high vorticity or energy, over the northern half of Alabama and Georgia and Tennessee. This will cause heights to lower, allowing some snow to potentially fall across the Tennessee River Valley! So, if you're a fan of snow, you'll want to head to eastern Tennessee and the Appalachian Mountains Wednesday evening.

This trough is the reason why we're forecasting rain tomorrow morning. Many models, shown below, show us picking up around half an inch of rain, which was my forecast from yesterday. I'm going to up that total, though, as we've already picked up a quarter of an inch and with at least two more rounds of rain to go, we should easily break that half inch mark!

To finish off this post, I'll show you the 24 hour temperature change map for the southeast:

Quite the cool-down for Mississippi this morning, isn't it!?

Remember to check out the 7-day planner!