Elmore County under a Moderate Risk of Severe Weather for tomorrow, Wednesday, April 5, 2017

The National Weather Service (NWS) in Birmingham has Elmore County listed in a Moderate Risk area for severe weather tomorrow (April 5th). According to the NWS, during the early morning hours a strong system will be moving up out of the gulf across the state and then swing east into Georgia. This will cause us to see a couple of different windows for the possibility of severe storms in central Alabama, but there will be only very brief breaks in the possibility for severe weather. This is a very unusual type of severe weather setup that we do not see very often, as this system will not be developing to our west. It will be developing right over us and moving out. Everyone needs to be weather aware all day tomorrow beginning in the early morning hours through tomorrow night. During the morning hours we will see 2 threats of severe weather as this front moves in and out of central Alabama. At this point, sometime after 1:00 p.m. it is likely that we see an increased threat of severe weather that will linger into tomorrow evening and night. The greater threat area in central Alabama tomorrow afternoon will likely be to the east of I-65. The threats include damaging winds, tornadoes, to include strong tornadoes (EF2 strength and greater, and possibly long track) and up to baseball size hail. Below you will find a graphic issued by the NWS that show the threats associated with this system. Also below is the updated Hazardous Weather Outlook issued by the NWS.

This is a serious threat and you need to make sure that you have your severe weather plans in place to activate at a the issuance of a Warning tomorrow.

We may send out additional updates depending on any significant changes or updates in the forecast. However, it is unlikely at this point that many changes will be made to the outlook as the confidence of this forecast is very high, according the NWS.

We will be monitoring this system very closely and we will activate the Emergency Operations Center upon the issuance of a Tornado Watch.