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We have finally progressed out of our frigid pattern, with a major warm now taking shape across the region. As with any warm spells during the cold season, we can expect an active pattern to unfold as a result. Attention is currently on Thursday afternoon & night, as a stout system looks to impact our area. Lets take a few minutes to break down what we’re looking at.
We’ll start off at the surface. An intensifying low pressure system is forecast to evolve over the southern/central plains, and track north/northeast toward the Great Lakes. In response to this, a warm front will lift to our north, placing us in the warm sector of this evolving weather maker.
This will pump our atmosphere full of moisture-rich, unstable air that will lay a foundation capable of producing inclement weather. An associated cold front will progress east/southeast across the Bluegrass State as we get into the late afternoon – evening hours of Thursday, providing lift to the warm, moist air which may fire off a line of strong thunderstorms. The GFS model loop below gives us an idea of how this system may behave. This model loops every six hours from midnight on Thursday through midnight on Friday:
Looking at ingredients just above the surface, the current thinking is that we’ll have a very strong low level jet (LLJ) in place. This will enhance our chances at seeing strong to severe thunderstorms. How, you ask? The LLJ puts gas in the tank, but the gas is only good if the car is started. In this case, the gas is warm moisture and the car is the storm, or air lifted inside this environment.
The aforementioned features will coincide to promote parameters of the overall system, providing richer “fuel” for storms to initiate and feed off of. In simpler terms…with the right environment in place, the stronger the LLJ, the higher capabilities of a given storm.
Think about how your vehicle performs if it’s running on regular grade gasoline. Now compare that to how it performs when filled with premium grade. It’s a similar response. The GFS model below is valid for 12pm Thu, and already has the LLJ kicking at 60-70+kts, which is rather significant:
Next we’ll take a look at the 500mb level, which is ~18,000ft up in the atmosphere. The GFS model below displays 500mb winds, valid for 6pm Thursday evening:
The orientation of the 500mb winds over our area are favorable for lift & storm development. Another thing worth noting is that the 250mb upper jet (~30,000+ft) stacks up in alignment with this, raising confidence in the forecast. The 250mb winds can be viewed below. It is also valid for 6pm Thursday:
I hope this gives you a better idea of the system that we’ll be dealing with later this week. Given the current alignment of data, we’ll have the likelihood of seeing a strong to severe squall line of thunderstorms develop and advance west to east ahead of the cold front Thursday afternoon into Thursday night.
Our main threats at this point in time look to be strong winds and torrential rainfall. Instability looks to be lacking at this point, but if we see an increasing trend on the models, other threats will arise. Please stay up to date as we get closer to this event.
I ask that you to keep in mind that we are still 4 days out from this potential weather maker, so conditions may alter. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to get in touch with me @Wx_Or_Not.