Very interesting setup on tap for the area tomorrow. I'm going to discuss what to expect for your area shortly. We need to watch a couple things tomorrow, one how warm we get and two how much sun we see. These two things would not be in our favor for thunderstorms.
Forcing is there. PERIOD. We discussed it yesterday in the blog.
One things I've noticed today from yesterday is now directional shear has begun to show up on the models. This concerns me. Basically directional shear is the turn of winds by height. Notice at the surface we have winds coming from the south.
Now let's look at winds a mile above the ground Wednesday morning.
This is what's concerning, the higher you move up into the atmosphere, the more turning of the winds you begin to see. What's even more concerning is the speeds of the winds. The NAM is showing winds of 80-100 knots! That's nearly off the charts for our area. That's between 92-115 mph!!! If thunderstorms tap into these winds, this could cause serious problems.
For the storms to tap into the wind energy there must be instability to bring those storms high up into the atmosphere. Instability has been reading low over the past couple of days and I want to discuss what the latest data is saying. Both the GFS and NAM are equal this evening so I will just show what the NAM is saying.
Both the GFS and NAM have been showing CAPE values around 250-500 units. I think models will bring this up just a bit IF sun occurs tomorrow. I'm pretty confident sun will shine tomorrow but for how long is the question.
Bottom Line: I think a potential damaging line of thunderstorms will approach the western sections of the coverage area but 1-3am Wednesday with the potential of 70mph and isolated spin-ups. It will move into the Salem, IN - Scottsburg, IN - Henryville, IN - Akron, KY area between 3-5am with winds of 60-70 mph and maybe an isolated spin up. At this point the line starts to weaken. I-65 areas and east from 5-7am with winds of 60-70mph in places. The spin up threat is nearly zero by then. I think the SPC has a good grip on the main risk right now for I-65 and west but would like to see the entire area go under a SLIGHT risk.
We'll continue to keep you updated and bring more throughout the day tomorrow!
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