James Spann: Sunny Saturday for Alabama; isolated showers Sunday
SEVERE CLEAR: All 67 Alabama counties are enjoying a cloudless sky this afternoon with temperatures between 68 and 75 degrees for most places. Tonight will be clear and cool, with a low in the 40s.
THE ALABAMA WEEKEND: Saturday will be another sunny day with a high in the 70s, but clouds will advance into north Alabama Saturday night ahead of a cold front. That front could squeeze out a few isolated showers Sunday morning over the northern third of the state, but moisture is very limited and rain amounts will be light and spotty. Otherwise, Sunday will be a partly sunny day with highs in the 60s over north Alabama and in the 70s for the southern counties.
NEXT WEEK: The entire week will be dry with sunny, cool days and clear, chilly nights; highs will be in the 60s, with lows mostly between 35 and 42 degrees. Frost is likely for colder spots on most mornings.
TROPICS: Tropical Storm Theta is in the far eastern Atlantic and will become post tropical by Sunday night or Monday west of Portugal. Newly developed Tropical Storm Iota is in the Caribbean. It is headed for Central America; the latest National Hurricane Center forecast shows landfall Monday morning near the Honduras/Nicaragua border as a major Category 3 hurricane.
The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season ends at the end of this month.
LEONID METEOR SHOWER PEAKS: From midnight to dawn this weekend watch for meteors in the annual Leonid meteor shower. The new moon Sunday guarantees a dark sky in rural locations on the shower’s peak mornings. The meteors are expected to fall most abundantly in the dark hours before dawn on Tuesday, but you should see several over the weekend. At the shower’s peak, you might see as many as 10 to 15 meteors per hour.
ON THIS DAY IN 1946: General Electric scientists produced snow in the Massachusetts Berkshires in the first modern-day cloud-seeding experiment. Scientist Vincent Schaefer dropped six pounds of dry ice pellets into a cloud over Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A 4-mile-long cloud was converted into snow flurries. The success of the experiment became the basis of many weather modification projects.
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