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Recently at WxOrNotBG, we have been trying to create excellent and consistent content for you all to read through weekly! So, I have brought back the weather week in review. This is a good way to look back on the week, and appreciate the weather that has occurred! So, without further ado, here is your weather week in review for: July 4th-10th.
How do I put this exactly? Last week was absolutely the busiest 7 day period that I have seen weather wise in a very long time. There was a 3 week timespan in February of 2015 that was a crazier timespan, but within one week? Last week tops it all, and I am not sure it is even close.
Where do we even begin? July 4th? July fourth was fascinating, because the state had already had a good chunk of rainfall the day/night before, as we were within the influence of a trough moving eastward through the region.
This forced not one, not two but three separate severe thunderstorm events during the day. These produced wind damage and flash flooding across the region, and the rainfall that fell across much of southern and western KY over July 3rd/4th set up much of the issues later in the week.
Tuesday was calm. Ahh, yes. What a nice thing. A calm day? We wouldn’t have another until Saturday. Wednesday started off fairly nice, with sunshine dominating the region. The atmosphere was very, very moisture and ready to go, as highs hit the upper 80s by early afternoon. This combined with dewpoints in the mid 70s to yield a very unstable atmosphere out ahead of a decaying MCS across southern Missouri.
As this MCS moved into a region with high temperatures, rich boundary layer moisture, and a strong vort max forcing this convection, an intense MCS developed, and a cluster of strong storms formed ahead of it as well.
This produced a fairly significant amount of wind damage across western and southern KY, as a strong cold pool developed behind the initial gust front, and pushed the line ahead.
This set us up for Wednesday night, which was arguably the most insane event of the week. The MCS and associated cold pool laid an outflow boundary across northern Tennessee, and we began to think that all was well across southern KY. However, instability was pooling across northern Arkansas and southern Missouri in association with a strong region of warm air advection. This pushed the instability into our region, and developed a strong boundary across southern KY. With high amounts of moisture pooled along this boundary, this set up a scenario in which intense thunderstorms could develop and train southeastward.
This trained across the region, and produced some of the higher rainfall amounts I’ve seen in quite sometime across the state. This led to high amounts of flooding, and saturated grounds that played a key role in wind damage.
By Thursday morning, cloud cover overran the region and the atmosphere was fairly turned over. Upstream from the region, another strong thunderstorm complex was decaying as it moved through a relatively stable environment across Missouri. As this occurred, skies cleared across southern and western KY, and the surface warmed. Because of the intense rainfall the night before, there was anomalously high surface moisture. With temps rising into the mid and upper 80s, this created a very unstable atmosphere for the complex to move into.
As it did so, it began to strengthen again, producing very strong winds across the region. Out ahead of it, multi-cell thunderstorms formed and moved west-east, setting up more training of heavy rainfall and damaging wind threats. After Wednesday left 15,000 people without power, over 10,000 people were without power on Thursday evening.
So, this couldn’t keep happening, right? Friday had hope all day. All day! Storms went to our north, and dissipated as they neared us, and strengthened again to our east. We may miss out!
Nope. Friday night, a complex of strong convection formed to our west, and began to move towards us. As it moved into a fairly unstable and untapped environment, the strong strengthened and developed a cold pool, leading to a strong complex of storms moving through the region.
At that point, I think we all just raised the white flag and gave up on good weather. However, Saturday and Sunday gave us relief from the crazy weather that had plagued us for an entire week. I am glad that is over.
Top WxBuzz Posts
It was very busy weather wise (as outlined above), so the WxBuzz section stayed quiet for much of the week. But we had a could good WxRecap posts, though.