A Mad, Mad ,Mad, Mad World!

Tue, 21 Dec 2004 09:47:48 -0500 by Bull

A very Happy Yuletide to all of my fellow Pagans today!
Now, on to the story…

The world is going insane! I had this dream about Beth skipping into our room and waking me up to tell me we may have a white Christmas. In my dream I laughed and went right back to sleep.

When I got up I told Beth about the dream and she dragged me to the computer and showed me the story below. Then she said that she had indeed tried to wake me and give me the news.

Gods! Can you possibly imagine the horror of Mobile in snow?

Highways becoming slaughterhouses, power outages, hundreds of raging house fires, people using gas in kerosene heaters from back in Grandpa’s day and blowing themselves to bits, children starving from lack of bread and milk…
Damn. Just damn.
(I’d best not hear any person who lives South of the Mason/Dixon Line laughing about the milk & bread comment! You know you are all guilty too!)

I think we’d best hope for sunshine and warm temps, myself.
Omar out.

Source: Mobile Register

Mobile may see a white Christmas
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
By KIM LANIER
Staff Reporter

Arctic air moving back into the region could set the stage for some snow to fall in the Mobile area on Christmas Eve.

Whether the region gets a wintry mix of snow, sleet and rain, or just all rain depends on the timing of the low-pressure system, according to David Eversole, a forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Mobile.

A system expected to bring storms to the area Wednesday should be followed by an arctic blast.

“It’s going to bring incredibly cold air,” Eversole said. “With that in place, low pressure is expected to develop and move across the Gulf of Mexico Friday and Friday night.”

Moisture spreading into the area Friday is expected to start out as cold rain and may become mixed with sleet during the late afternoon and change to snow as evening temperatures fall rapidly.

“This is the classic, textbook for making snow down here,” Eversole said.

“The problem with the whole thing is we don’t know for sure exactly how this low pressure is going to develop and move,” he said.

Rain may end before it has a chance to change to snow, he said.

If everything comes together and snowflakes do fly, Eversole said he believes the ground may will be too warm for snow to accumulate, but the frigid conditions could cause some surfaces to ice over.

The National Weather Service forecast calls for highs Friday near 40 and lows Friday night into Saturday morning plunging into the middle teens in the northern sections of southwest Alabama. Readings in the immediate Mobile area should range from the upper teens to near 20, with temperatures a few degrees higher closer to the coast, Eversole said.

While the National Weather Service isn’t calling for precipitation on Christmas Day, precipitation could linger longer than expected if the low-pressure area slows down, Eversole said.

The Agricultural Weather Information Service, which provides some of the information for the Register weather page, indicates high chances of precipitation Wednesday and Thursday, with good chances on Friday and Saturday.

The Mobile area gets snow about once every four years. As a result, the conditional probability of snow on Christmas Day is about one-third of 1 percent, according to Eversole.

Data show that, since record-keeping began, it snowed in Mobile on Christmas Day only once, back in 1989 when a trace was measured.