Drier Air Works In Later This Evening; Eyeing A Cool Close To The Month…
Highlights:
- Stormy times later today, especially south
- Drier air mass works in
- Storms return Sunday
- Cooler to close the month
The Clean Up Begins…It was an active (and long) night across central IN as storms rumbled through. Thankfully, the clean up will take place with dry conditions today for most of us. For our southern viewers, we expect more widespread thunderstorms to fire during the afternoon and evening hours as a frontal boundary drops south. We think most of central IN is dry today.
A drier, more refreshing air mass will filter into the region to close the week and head into the weekend. Sunshine will prevail.
Warmth and humidity will be on the uptick for the second half of the weekend and storms will be associated with the moisture return. Saturday is definitely the pick of the weekend!
Cooler times loom to wrap up the month…
Upcoming 7-Day Precipitation Forecast:
- Snowfall: 0.00″
- Rainfall: 0.50″-1.00″
We won’t bore you with the meteorological ingredients/ lingo that are coming together to lead to an active Wednesday with this post, but please know that nearly all severe weather parameters point to the threat, and even likelihood, of an active day.
The first of multiple storm clusters will likely be moving into central IN Wednesday morning. Here’s an idea of what the radar may look like around 7a.
We think we undergo a “lull” in the action Wednesday afternoon before a potentially more serious complex of storms blows into town during the evening hours. We caution that we’re not as confident on specific timing with the evening round of storms.
Current data would imply a tornado threat for areas from northern IL into northwestern IN with the afternoon/ evening convection before “morphing” into a more widespread damaging wind threat as the line propels southeast into the nighttime hours. 
Damaging straight line winds and large hail are of biggest concern as these scattered strong to severe storms continue to advance southeast. This is all in association with a cold front moving into a very warm, moist, and unstable air mass.
In addition to the hail and wind threat, locally torrential downpours are a good bet as precipitable water values (PWATs) approach 2″+ in some areas.
We’ll turn much quieter during the overnight as the cold front passes through the region. A northwest wind shift will allow a drier air mass to slip into central IN come Tuesday morning.
The teleconnections aren’t much help in trying to generate longer term thoughts. They would favor more of a “normal” period temperature-wise, locally. (BTW, thanks to the fine folks at MAD US Weather and ESRL for the data below).
Looking at some of the model data, the general consensus is for a warm look to go through the back half of the month, but we caution that we can’t simply “broad brush” the forecast through the EOM as warm and relatively quiet (a note on that in a moment).
As mentioned above, despite an overall warm look on the models there will likely be periods of cooler “jabs” and it sure looks like a rather transient pattern to us across the Mid West and Ohio Valley, featuring more of the sustained heat across the Southwest region. Transient patterns usually also yield for potential wetness and we note the GFS Ensembles trending in that direction to wrap up the month.
In the shorter term, there will also be localized heavy downpours, but it’s a continued case of “haves and have nots.” There won’t be any particular rhyme or reason to the specific placement of heavy, gully-washer type showers and storms mid week.
