Good Wednesday, gang. We continue to see a very active pattern rolling on across our part of the world. This pattern can bring strong storms our way later tonight, with a much greater threat for big storms this weekend. That’s a setup really getting my attention from this far out.
Let’s focus on what we have in the short-term before looking at the weekend.
Highs today hit 80-85 with a stout southwesterly wind kicking in. Skies will stay dry during the daylight hours, but things change from west to east after that. This is when a cold front works in from the west with a line of thunderstorms. This line may be severe as it moves into western parts of the state, but should gradually weaken as it moves eastward into Thursday.
From there, we will watch a potent setup from the plains to the Appalachian Mountains this weekend. A surge of summer air lifts northward into our region later Friday into Saturday. This will then meet up with MUCH colder air coming in behind it later this weekend to produce a rather explosive setup.
This is pretty awesome to see…
As the initial surge of summer air sweeps in here, overrunning strong to severe thunderstorms will be possible Friday night into the first half of Saturday…
Warm, moist and very unstable air will then take control Saturday into Sunday. That air is ahead of a storm system rolling across the plains and into the Great Lakes. That will have a major snowstorm behind it and a significant severe weather outbreak ahead of it…
In additional to the severe weather threat, these storms can put down a lot of water in our region…
Make it a great Wednesday and take care.
Storms is a dirty word and I don’t like them. I know the last time the tornado sirens went off about 5 times. Scary for me.
Well its not like this would be the first year that the Mountain Mushroom Festival got blown away. Its orientation along Broadway in Irvine makes things particularly vulnerable to strong winds due to the Tunnel effect.
Thanks Chris. It seems we are getting all of our storminess that we should have had during the winter is cutting loose now in the form of severe weather. Looking like a wet spring and humid. Hope that doesn’t mean a wet cool summer. Nor a hot dry one. I don’t want much, do I? (Ha) I know tonight and in the A M isn’t supposed to be too much, but if it is, I trust you to keep us updated and ahead of it, as you always do. Have a great Wednesday everyone, Remember….its a blank page. Write something good on it!
I don’t know what specific time period the rainfall map above shows (just the weekend?…the next 5 days?), anyway, the SPC’s QPF for days 1-5 show rain totals approaching double-digit amounts in Arkansas with 2-5″ possible for central and west Kentucky.
The Storm Prediction Center says there’s a 40 percent chance of a watch (would likely be a Severe T-Storm Watch) being issued tonight for western parts of Kentucky. There is already a Severe Thunderstorm Watch out for western Tennessee. But the line seems to be losing a bit of its punch. As Chris Bailey mentioned, the severe threat will weaken as the line progresses east overnight into tomorrow. Still a threat of some heavy rain, small hail and some gusty winds.
The weekend could have a greater severe threat; it will be interesting to see the updates the next few days.