12/28 – Brantly’s “Warm Again Tomorrow, Watching Thursday” Monday Night Forecast

It was a very pleasant day across the region today. Skies were mostly sunny through much of the day and temperatures climbed into the mid 60s to lower 70s. Winds remained light.

The bulk of this forecast focuses on our system on New Years Eve but prior to it we should remain fairly quiet with conditions continuing to moderate. The forecast tonight will be quiet and cool. Tuesday and Wednesday will definitely be the transition days as we continue to moderate.

Overall confidence in the New Year’s Eve system is quite low but we are confident that we will see showers and thunderstorms Thursday and into Thursday night. The issue is what will the impacts be and timing — that is what makes this forecast difficult for our area right now. There are many factors that suggest we could see a rather potent line of storms along that cold front and possibly a few rotating severe storms even ahead of the line. In addition there could be heavy rain as the line moves east but the individual storm cells will move more NNE or north and these could train over the same areas dropping a lot of rain in a short time. There is enough evidence with current models that would suggest a severe weather event will occur across the north central Gulf Coast, but whether it will it happen here or whether it will be more inland is yet to be determined. We should begin to get a better handle on things late tonight and into tomorrow.