Rain & Storm Chances Getting Closer

Happy Wednesday to all of you in WABBLES country! I have a quick blog update for everyone as we go into today and the end of the workweek. The main topic of discussion today will be the rain and storm chances that will exist today and into this weekend.

Today

Starting off today’s discussion, the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) has removed virtually all of WABBLES from the Marginal (Level 1/5) risk for severe weather today and into tonight.

This is very good news for us, but just in case, we will be monitoring this very closely, but I do not believe this will be something to cause any alarm for.

Taking a look at the future radar, we can see quite the mass of rain and storms moving over the WABBLES area towards this evening. This clump, or mass, of rain is good it looks like it will be hard for strong to severe storm structures to materialize.

Looking at the surface dewpoints, this supports the thought that it will be hard for severe weather to get going over us. Now, with dewpoints, the higher the number, the easier it will be for instability to develop and maintain itself. We can see the higher dewpoints (60+) are staying relatively south of the KY state line, this also lines up the SPC outlook.

Looking at the actual instability parameter itself shows that virtually all of the storm fuel will be well to our south where the SPC has the higher threat categories in place.

The takeaway here is that it certainly looks like it will be raining tonight, thunder/lightning and isolated strong wind gusts are the only concern, neither of which should be largely impactful.

Thursday

Thursday will feature the passage of the cold front relatively early, followed by more of the mild temperatures and possibly some stubborn clouds as the high pressure moves in as well. Highs for Thursday should remain in the mid-upper 50s.

Friday

Friday brings itself some more storm chances with the SPC having all of WABBLES in a slight (level 2/5) risk for severe weather.

Paramaters for Friday do signal a bit of a severe weeather threat, but there is still a lot of uncertainty with it as well. The most uncertainty will be, of course, in the amount of instaiblity we can set up. You can see that surface dewpoints do reach the lower 60s in our area, supporting some instability development and sustainment.

Taking a look at the actual instability paramater, you can see weak instability (but it doesn’t take much in the winter) over WABBLES, but the better instability is further south. This would warrant the severe weather risk for us, but also lead to a thought that the more significant threat should be further south at this time.

Wind energy will also be there, like most wintertime severe weather setups. Looking here at the low level jet, you can see it centered right over KY/TN/MO/AR in values up to and over 50 knots. 50 knots is a very big number for the low level jet, but without a good supply of instability, it can often times mean nothing.

So, a severe weather threat on Friday certainly seems possible, however it will greatly depend on the amount of instability that can develop, which at this time is very fuzzy. If models trend lower with instability, then we are in good shape, if they trend higher, then we need to be watching for a more significant threat.

Saturday

I would like to briefly touch on the potential severe weather risk on Saturday before the end of the blog. The SPC still has us in the 15% risk area (equivalent to a level 2/5 slight risk) for severe weather. It is still a bit too early to talk about specifics, rather, it is a good time now to be aware that Saturday could result in some severe weather risk.

That will be all for this blog post folks! I hope everyone can stay dry tonight and has a great day, and as always I will have our social media accounts linked below which I encourage everyone to visit.

Have a blessed day!