WEST ALABAMA MONDAY BRIEFING
Happy Monday. It may be a struggle for many of you to stay away if you hung in there until the end of Alabama's Tuscaloosa Regional Championship Game win over Boston College in the wee hours of this morning.
A summertime-like weather pattern will continue as we move into the new work week with isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 80s to lower 90s. Showers and thunderstorms will linger into the early evening hours before giving way to patchy fog overnight. Lows will be in the 60s.
Tuesday will be a repeat of basically the same forecast.
Topping the News:
A downed tree near where Mayfair Drive and Veteran's Memorial Parkway created significant rush hour traffic problems this morning. The large tree fell on two cars. It took some time to remove the tree and the damaged vehicles.
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The Tuscaloosa NCAA Baseball Regional this past weekend was successful not only for UA at “The Joe” but also in the pocketbook of the local hospitality industry as hotels, restaurants and bars saw an uptick in business at a normally slow time of the year with the majority of UA students gone for the summer. Summer concerts at the Amp and youth league baseball and softball tournaments will help pick up the slack into August.
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The Alabama Legislature has one more meeting day this session. With time running out, if a bill has not passed at least one chamber, it won’t pass by the end of the session. One bill bumping up against adjournment will make it illegal for retailers to sell vaping products to people under 21 years old while another mandates that children go to kindergarten or prove first-grade readiness. Another bill on life-support criminalizes assistance on absentee voting.
If Gov. Ivey signs it, a bill passed by the legislature drops the state grocery tax to 3%. If there is 3.5% or better growth in the Education trust Fund the tax would shrink to 2%. The governor proposed the grocery tax reduction in her State of the State Address.
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The summer vacation season is here, and many West Alabamians are heading to the beach in large numbers. ABC3340 Chief Meteorologist James Spann is warning beachgoers to remember many of those popup afternoon thunderstorms on the Gulf Coast spark dangerous lightning strike. Alabama is 5th in the nation in lighting injuries and deaths.
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The Tuscaloosa City School system needs to hire 119 employees over the course of the summer, 60 of which are teaching positions, and 17 are bus driver openings. To combat the teacher shortage TCS created a pilot program to pay their student interns this past spring semester. The program was implemented to recruit and retain teachers and has worked. School officials say the school board will continue it this coming school year. The need for more bus drivers is due to an increase of routes because of a population increase.
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Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of Mountain Brook teenager Natalee Holloway, was transferred Saturday from the Callapalca prison to Lima in Peru, sources confirmed to CBS News. He is then expected to be transferred to the US to stand trial, but that date is unknown at this time.
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In Sports:
The Alabama Crimson Tide baseball team defeated the Boston College Eagles 8-0 in the early hours of this morning to advance to the Super Regionals for the first time since 2010. Alabama will compete in the Winston-Salem Super Regional against Wake Forest this coming weekend.
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The Crimson Tide’s softball season may have ended in the College World Series last week, but building next year’s team has already started. Former Central Arkansas ace pitcher Kayla Beaver is transferring to Alabama for her 5th year of eligibility. She finished her season with a 25-7 record and a 1.15 earned run average.
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Tide Football Coach Nick Saban and Southeastern Conference Commission Greg Sankey are among a contingent of SEC coaches and administrators set to meet with members of congress Wednesday and Thursday. They are concerned that the lack of national regulation of name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation and the Transfer Portal has opened the doors to schools forming consortiums that are resulting in college athletes going to the highest bidder. Currently NIL is loosely regulated by individual states only.
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Have a great week and keep an umbrella or raincoat close.
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