It’s fairly safe to say the forecast for severe weather for Thursday didn’t live up to its billing.

It was a severe weather day that had been anticipated for nearly a week. There was a Level 3 out of 5 risk for severe weather for a large part of the state, and numerous storms and a few tornadoes were expected. Schools and businesses closed early. There were two tornado watches issued for Alabama.

But the storms — for the most part — never materialized.

There was a tornado warning, for northwest Alabama, some strong storms and considerable flash flooding, but widespread swaths of severe storms didn’t come to pass.

Not that anyone is complaining. Too much.

However, there was some concern among Alabama meteorologists that this so-called bust would cause people to ignore the threat for severe storms the next time it rolls around.

The National Weather Service in Birmingham shared those concerns and detailed some of the mechanics of what happened with Thursday’s weather in a post on Facebook.

* The weather service said rain earlier in the day, before the storm system arrived, helped to tamp down the energy in the atmosphere and led to more stable conditions near the surface, making it more difficult for storms to intensify.

* Warm air higher in the atmosphere, combined with the lack of a strong “lifting” mechanism, kept the storms that did form from ramping up in intensity.

* Wind shear, which causes storms to rotate, was around but didn’t present itself as expected.

The weather service said it was as glad as anyone that Alabama got a pass this go-around. “We’ve had it rough around here recently, so we are in the same boat as many of you in that we’re glad we got a break this time,” the Facebook post read.

The state has already had to deal with 29 tornadoes in 2023. All of those came in January, which is a record for the month.

Eight people have lost their lives in severe weather in 2023, and there have been at least 20 injuries.

So no one is complaining about the lack of storms. However, a forecast that didn’t exactly pan out is still tough for meteorologists to take.

“Of course we kick ourselves that we weren’t able to tell that these limiting factors would occur in such a way that we would not end up with a big event, and then be able to adjust our forecast,” the weather service said.

“There were indications that they would have some role, but what would the outcome end up being, exactly? Sometimes you don’t know until the event is underway. We get it, but limitations remain in the world of weather forecasting. There’s always going to be a scenario A & B (or C) and it’s best to plan for the worst one. Thankfully, advancements in technology and weather research to-date have allowed us to be able to correctly forecast many more events than those that didn’t pan out.”

The weather service pointed out that there were a lot of weather teams in west Alabama on Thursday with mobile radars, weather stations and balloon launchers as “part of a multi-agency and multi-university effort to better understand severe weather systems that come through our region. This is part of the effort to learn and improve.”

The weather service’s Facebook explanation was generally well-received, with most commenters grateful to miss out on storms this time around.