Friday, especially in the afternoon and evening, will feature the potential for a few strong to severe storms across the Tennessee Valley. There is currently a low-end Level 2 of 5 risk outlined across all of southern middle Tennessee, down into parts of north Alabama, and into far northeast Mississippi. Outside of that, there is a low-end Level 1 of 5 risk outlined all the way down well into south-central Alabama and Mississippi. As mentioned, this is a lower-end type threat. Not all of the necessary ingredients for an organized risk of severe storms are there, and the ones that are present aren’t in significant amounts. However, a few storms during the afternoon and evening may produce gusty straight-line winds of 45 to 60 mph and isolated hail up to quarter size. The tornado threat isn’t zero, but the low-level wind shear that’s critical for tornadoes is on the low side of things. Unless that trends upward as we get closer, if we get a watch on Friday afternoon, it is more likely to be a severe t’storm watch instead of a tornado watch.
Severe weather threats are nothing out of the ordinary in our part of country in the fall and winter. Our tornado season here in the Tennessee Valley runs from early November (sometimes it can start in October some years) all the way through the end of May. It’s nothing to be afraid of or panic about. Just have your severe weather safety plan in place, have reliable ways of hearing warnings, and then pay attention on Friday and enact your plan if a warning is issued for you, and we will all get through it just fine!
Colder air moves in starting Saturday night into Sunday behind a second cold front. We’re only in the low to mid 50s for highs on Sunday before dropping into the upper 20s overnight. Monday is the coldest day of this cold snap. Daytime highs look to only get to the upper 30s to maybe low 40s if a few of us are lucky. Gusty northwest winds of up to 20 to 30 mph will keep wind chill values in the mid to upper 20s all day! And then, on top of that, it looks like we will have enough lingering moisture in the cloud layer on Monday under the upper trough so that scattered light FLURRIES will be possible. No, we are not talking about anything “sticking” in our local area of southern Tennessee and north Alabama. That means there’s no reason to worry about road conditions. We do not expect any accumulation, travel problems, anything like that. Just a few scattered flakes flying… something pretty to look at as we head into the Thanksgiving and Christmas season! And then, while we will have freezing temps on Sunday night, our big widespread hard freeze and the complete areawide end to the growing season comes Monday night into Tuesday morning. We expect low temps areawide well down into the mid 20s, with upper 20s deep into central Alabama to our south. It is also looking more and more possible that some areas of middle Tennessee in our viewing area counties could get into the lower 20s by daybreak on Tuesday morning! The good news… the cold doesn’t stay long. We’ll be back to 60 degrees for a high as soon as next Wednesday!
