Published On: 09.16.22 | 

By: James Spann

James Spann: Hotter afternoons ahead for Alabama

HEAT LEVELS RISING: Dry weather will continue across Alabama through the weekend and into all of next week as an upper high builds over the region. Expect mostly sunny days, fair nights and rising heat levels. Highs over the weekend will be between 86 and 89 degrees for most communities; then we hit the low to mid 90s next week, about 10 degrees above average for late September in Alabama. Mornings next week won’t be as cool; lows will be close to 70 degrees.

There’s still no sign of any heavy rain event for Alabama for the next seven to 10 days as this benign weather pattern continues.

FOOTBALL WEATHER: Clear weather is the story for the high school football games across Alabama tonight with temperatures falling into the 70s during the games.

Saturday, Auburn hosts Penn State (2:30 p.m. kickoff) at Jordan-Hare Stadium. The sky will be sunny and the temperature about 87 degrees at kickoff. Alabama will host Louisiana-Monroe  (3 p.m. kickoff) at Bryant-Denny Stadium. It will be sunny and very warm, with temperatures falling from near 88 degrees at kickoff into the low 80s by the final whistle.

UAB is also at home, hosting Georgia Southern at Protective Stadium in downtown Birmingham (2:30 p.m. kickoff). Expect a sunny sky with a kickoff temperature around 87 degrees, falling into the low 80s by the end of the game.

TROPICS: Tropical Storm Fiona still features sustained winds of 50 mph and is approaching the Leeward Islands this afternoon. Fiona could be very near hurricane strength as it approaches the southern coast of the Dominican Republic. The terrain of Hispaniola is likely to disrupt Fiona’s circulation, but the global models suggest that Fiona shouldn’t have much trouble reorganizing itself once over the far southwestern Atlantic, and the National Hurricane Center forecast now calls for the cyclone to become a hurricane by the end of the five-day forecast period.

Fiona will turn north early next week and most likely will stay east of the contiguous U.S.; it is no threat to the Gulf of Mexico.

ON THIS DATE IN 2004: At 1:50 a.m., Ivan made landfall just west of Gulf Shores as an upper-end Category 3 hurricane. Ivan packed winds of more than 120 mph and a 10- to 15-foot storm surge. The magnitude and extent of the damage and destruction over Baldwin County in Alabama and Escambia and Santa Rosa counties in northwest Florida exceeded that of both Hurricane Frederic (September 1979) and Hurricane Opal (October 1995).

Hurricane Ivan may rival the magnitude of damage and destruction caused by the Hurricane of 1926, which ravaged the counties east of Mobile Bay. Eight deaths in the western Florida Panhandle (seven in Escambia County and one in Santa Rosa County) were the direct result of the storm.

A sailboat anchored in Wolf Bay in Baldwin County recorded a wind gust of 145 mph. Demopolis, more than 100 miles inland, endured wind gusts estimated at 90 mph, while Montgomery saw wind gusts of 60 to 70 mph. At the height of the outages, Alabama Power reported 489,000 subscribers had lost electrical power — roughly half of its subscriber base.

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.