A line of showers and thunderstorms ahead of a strong cold front in western Tennessee and Mississippi at 7 am will reach northwestern Alabama by late morning and move through the state this afternoon and evening. The SPC currently has the state in a Marginal Risk as current cloud cover from overnight rainfall is expected to keep instability on the low side.
As a result, only a few storms within the line have the potential to produce straight-line wind gusts from 40-60 mph and hail. However, if there is less cloud cover ahead of the storms as we head into the afternoon, this would increase instability, there would be an uptick in damaging wind gusts and I would not be surprised to see the SPC to upgrade portions of the state to a Slight Risk.
Many areas across the northern and western sections of Alabama received 2-5 inches of rain in the past 24 hours. The line of storms will be moving rather quickly, and an additional 0.25-1.5 inches of total rainfall is expected with locally higher amounts in stronger storms. These amounts could still produce brief flooding issues, especially where heavy rainfall has already occurred…