Alabama faces the threat of strong storms, high winds and heavy rain today, tonight and into Tuesday, according to forecasters.

The key points:

* Storms aren’t expected to arrive until later tonight into Tuesday morning. Southwest Alabama has the best chance of seeing stronger storms, and the National Weather Service said a tornado can’t be ruled out.

* Storms could reach Alabama’s western border by 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. and track eastward through the overnight hours. The National Weather Service expects the storms to weaken as they move through the state. The weather service forecast for timing is at the bottom of this post.

* Gusty non-thunderstorm winds will be possible all day today, and gusts could reach as high as 50 mph in some parts of the state. Winds that strong could knock down tree limbs and take out power.

* The storm system could bring parts of the state 2-3 inches of rain.

Here are the details:

The storms aren’t expected until late tonight, and a few of them could become severe and contain damaging straight-line winds and a tornado or two, especially in southwest Alabama.

NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center has included part of west Alabama in a Level 2 out of 5 risk for severe weather tonight. A Level 2 risk means that scattered severe storms will be possible. (See today’s severe weather outlook at the top of this post. It will be updated throughout the day.)

The rest of western Alabama has a Level 1 risk and could have to deal with isolated severe storms. The threat for isolated severe storms will continue into Tuesday, and the SPC has much of south Alabama in a Level 1 risk:

The gusty winds will be possible throughout the day today thanks to the tightening pressure gradient between storm systems and a low-level jet (or a fast-moving ribbon of air in the lower levels of the atmosphere), according to the National Weather Service.

Winds could gust as high as 50 mph (that’s tropical storm strength) in parts of the state, and wind advisories will be in effect throughout the day and overnight for much of the state.

The Alabama counties in brown in the map below will be under wind advisories at some point today:

Weather service forecasters said on Monday morning that they wouldn’t be surprised to see some tree limbs being taken down by the winds and some sporadic power outages before it’s over.

Here are the wind advisories for north Alabama, central Alabama and south Alabama.

And there could also be another round of rain. The weather service is forecasting some areas to get up to 3 inches of rain before the system moves out.

Here is the forecast total rainfall:

Here’s a look at the expected storm timing from the National Weather Service:

NORTH ALABAMA

CENTRAL ALABAMA

SOUTH ALABAMA