Storms will follow warm weekend
Published 3:39 pm Friday, April 25, 2014
Plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures will be in store for Chilton County this weekend.
Daytime highs on Saturday and Sunday are projected to reach the mid-80s with overnight lows in the upper 50s.
“The weekend is going to be quite nice,” said meteorologist Matt Anderson with the National Weather Service in Calera. “The warm weather will prime the atmosphere for some severe weather at the beginning of the week.”
Anderson said a “powerful” storm system will move into Alabama bringing two rounds of severe weather that could produce tornadoes, damaging winds, hail and flooding.
“The first round of severe weather is predicted for Monday night into Tuesday morning,” Anderson said. “The second round will be Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.”
Although it is too early to tell regarding specifics of how much rainfall is expected for the Chilton County area, Anderson said multiple rounds of heavy rainfall is predicted.
“The storm systems are still a little ways out, so it is hard to pinpoint the exact location of the storms,” Anderson said. “We do know there will be quite a bit of rainfall.”
Anderson said due to the timing of the storms arriving during a period when most people are sleeping, he encourages everyone to utilize a weather radio or weather app for smart phones.
“Something that has an alarm would be ideal because you will need something that catches your attention,” Anderson said. “There is the concern that these storms could arrive when most people are not going to be weather aware, so we are asking everyone to pay close attention to the weather.”
Anderson said it is typical for severe weather to be a factor this time of year with severe weather season running February to mid-May.
“We just ask that everyone be weather aware at the beginning of the week,” Anderson said. “The weekend is going to be beautiful, but the beginning of the week will be a different story.”