RADAR CHECK: Showers and thunderstorms continue across southeast Alabama this afternoon, mostly south of a line from Andalusia to Phenix City. The rest of the state is seeing more clouds than sun thanks to a mesoscale convective vortex spinning away over the western counties. Storms will end across southeast Alabama later tonight; the sky becomes mostly fair for the rest of the state.Temperatures are well below average across Alabama today thanks to clouds; most communities are somewhere between 75 and 85 degrees at mid-afternoon, a rare “cool” day in July.

THE ALABAMA WEEKEND AND NEXT WEEK: Heat levels rise again with increasing amounts of sun and fewer showers. Look for partly to mostly sunny days, fair nights and a few showers and storms during the afternoons and evenings in random places. The chance of any specific spot seeing rain is 15-25% over the weekend and 25-35% most days next week. In other words, classic midsummer weather.STORM FATALITIES: A 3-month-old and a 3-year-old were killed when a tree fell on a home in the 600 block of 10th Avenue West in western Birmingham Thursday. An 11-year-old in the house was taken to Children’s of Alabama with non-life-threatening injuries. One woman trapped in the house was freed before 9 p.m. Another woman was also rescued from the home near Birmingham-Southern College.

TROPICS: All remains very calm across the Atlantic basin and tropical storm formation is not expected through next week.

ON THIS DATE IN 1993: The levee holding back the flooding Mississippi River at Kaskaskia, Illinois, ruptured, forcing the town’s people to flee on barges. The incident at Kaskaskia was the most dramatic event of the flood. At 9:48 a.m., the levee broke, leaving the people of Kaskaskia with no escape route other than two Army Corp of Engineers barges. By 2 p.m., the entire town was underwater.

BEACH FORECAST: Click here to see the AlabamaWx Beach Forecast Center page.

For more weather news and information from James Spann and his team, visit AlabamaWx.