Marginal Chance of Severe Weather Tonight Into Tomorrow

December 10, 2021

Only 14 shopping days left for Christmas! Not on anyone's shopping list, severe weather is in the forecast starting early Saturday morning sweeping east-southeast through the afternoon. The SPC has placed northwestern AL and central TN in marginal and slight risk areas for day 1 (which ends at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning), with a marginal risk area extending through the rest of AL, eastern TN, and the western most FL Panhandle on day 2. Isolated tornadoes and damaging winds are the main threats, perhaps some hail also.

Today through 6 a.m. Tomorrow

Starting at 6 a.m. Saturday

This weather is associated with a warm front that will lift north prior to a cold front sweeping through. The worst weather will be overnight on Friday night/early Saturday to the west-northwest of our region, but some of the threat will remain on Saturday as the system makes it to our area in the early morning hours. For our area most of the severe threat will be associated with squall line storms right along the cold front but some isolated storms ahead of the front could be severe as well.

Frontal Passage

Simulated Radar (timing and coverage will vary)

The enhanced and slight risk areas on day 1 just creep into AL but everyone on this email should be outside of that unless you're traveling. The risk is lower on day 2 and the threat looks to subside around mid afternoon so locations in southeast AL and the rest of the FL Panhandle should experience typical non-severe cold front thunderstorms. That being said, situations like this can change so be aware of the weather in your area. As an example, we had a potential tornado try to spin up over our house just after midnight on Tuesday. I don't think it was ever on the ground but there were lots of limbs down, Christmas decorations knocked over, and a few trees down in the area. Probably the strongest thunderstorm winds we've experienced in our 8 years here. Severe weather was not expected at all.

Radar Late Tuesday Night. My house is the "+" south of Portland. Green and red close together in the upper right and lower left indicate rotation, the lower right is a rotation product. A tornado warning extending to the northeast was issued right after it passed over.

That's it for today. Stay safe and have multiple ways of receiving warnings. On Tuesday night our weather radio didn't alarm for some reason (happened to a neighbor also) but our phones did.

Have a good Friday and a great weekend.

Chris