Monday, May 9, 2016 — 10:44 pm
A rather unsettled weather pattern is taking hold over our area. As a result, we saw an abundance of cloud cover today with a couple of light sprinkles mixed during the afternoon.
Overnight, our rain chances will increase slightly, with a few widely scattered showers possible, as shown in the HRRR run (below).
HRRR loop through 11 am, Tuesday:
It appears better chances for showers and thunderstorms will occur later in the morning, possibly lasting into our lunch hour.
Tuesday — Mostly cloudy. Scattered thunderstorms possible. Wake up: 62°, High: 82°. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
Tomorrow afternoon and evening may…or may not…need to be watched closely.
Why such as discrepancy, you may ask?
Well, let’s start with the Storm Prediction Center’s Day 2 Outlook…
SPC has outlined our area as Slight Risk for severe thunderstorm development, primarily during the afternoon and evening.
Note: this is the ‘Day 2’ outlook; the ‘Day 1’ outlook will be released at around 1 am, so SPC’s thinking could change between now and then.
Some of the ingredients needed for severe weather will be in place tomorrow, most notably shear and CAPE (convective available potential energy). However, storm initiation during the afternoon and evening will require some sort of lifting mechanism to get things going. In this case, the only such mechanism will be how much convection will be left behind by the rain and storms we see earlier in the day (if we see much of anything, at all) — and it’s not appearing to be all that much.
The NAM4 (below) suggests tomorrow afternoon/evening will be a total bust.
But again, the ingredients for severe storms will be there, so if something does manage to form, it will need to be monitored closely. This is looking to primarily be a large hail and damaging wind event with anything that does form, with tornadoes not really a concern.
Now, that same NAM4 model run does show something a little more noteworthy overnight Tuesday/early Wednesday morning…
NAM4 suggests thunderstorms being right on our doorstep, though not quite making it here, early Wednesday morning. Later model runs will either verify or debunk this, so for now, we’ll just casually mention it.
Wednesday is looking similar to Tuesday, although without any severe threat. Thursday is kind of a toss up, but is appearing to perhaps to be the wettest of the next few days. We’ll know more as models come into better agreement.
By Friday, we’ll begin to clear out with our high temperatures falling back down into the 70s.
Extended:
Pollen Outlook:
