Sunday, May 6, 2012

Stormy forecast for Tomorrow

After an absolutely gorgeous week of near-record breaking warm temperatures, things have finally started to get back to near normal, with temperatures back down into the 70's and much less humidity.  Before things get back to normal, a storm system will move towards the area, bringing with it the chance for showers and thunderstorms.  Right now, the main threat appears to hit the area from around 2 or 3 a.m. tonight until about noon tomorrow.  As for details, right now, there is quite a strong temperature and dew point gradient (difference in a weather variable over a given distance; strong dew point and temperature gradients often indicate strong frontal boundaries) across Northwest Ohio, with dew points in the 50's in Antwerp and towards Fort Wayne, and dew points in the 40's and 30's over Toledo, indicating quite a stable air mass across the area.  The higher dew points over Antwerp and Fort Wayne have moved into the area due to the approaching warm front, which is slowly easing its way into the area.  As for temperatures, here in Antwerp, temperatures are approaching the upper 70's while just to the west in Illinois, temperatures are soaring into the 90's with dew points in the lower 70's.  I am not expecting this kind of warmth here tomorrow, but if some sunshine can come out during the afternoon, temperatures could quickly make it into the lower 80's, which could heighten the potential for severe thunderstorms.  Due to the absence of large scale deep layer shear throughout the atmosphere tomorrow, storms will have a hard time organizing into large supercells.  This could mean multicell clusters with isolated severe weather will hit the area tomorrow, especially south of Route 6 and Napoleon.  IF the warm front lifts farther northward, instability could be a lot higher and thunderstorms a lot stronger by tomorrow evening.  As for tonight, as seen on current radar imagery, large thunderstorm clusters are developing in western Illinois, which will move slowly toward the area during the evening hours.  During the evening hours, high-resolution model guidance is suggesting that thunderstorms will become numerous and widespread by midnight, overspreading the area by about 2 a.m.  Heavy rain and gusty winds will be the main threat with these storms, with some of the storms closer to the warm front producing large hail.  These bands of rain could cause localized heavy rainfall in isolated areas, with general rainfall amounts just over a half an inch by noon tomorrow.  I am very uncertain with this forecast, as instability is very low over the area right now, which is causing thunderstorms to weaken considerably as they move toward the area.  As the low level and upper level warm front move over the area, instability will gradually increase, allowing thunderstorms to develop ahead of the them.  Back to Monday afternoon, instability should cause thunderstorms to form, but they will be fairly disorganized, unless the warm front lifts farther north past the area.  If the instability moves into our area, the thunderstorms that form will quickly become organized due to the better shear profiles over the area.  Even then, shear will not be that strong, which will hinder any tornado threat or long-lived thunderstorms.  It will be quite favorable for squall lines, which could move through by the early evening around 5 or 6 p.m.  Monday evening, a scattered thunderstorms will continue moving into the area, with a gradual decrease after 8 p.m.  The cold front moves through by Tuesday, as an upper level wave approaches the area from the northwest.  This upper level wave will produce little or no precipitation because of little moisture available.  Temperatures will continue their fall throughout the week, until rising slightly by the end of the week.

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