Entering A Stormy Period…
We’re enjoying quiet times across Indiana this evening, but times are quickly changing to put us into a stormy position between Wednesday morning and wrapping up the work week.
While the overall pattern is an easy one to label from a broad scale perspective as “stormy,” the precise details are incredibly difficult to pin point much more than 12-24 hours in advance. With that said, most of the state is very much in fair game for periods of storms (generally tracking in a NW to SE fashion) between now and the end of the work week. Eventually, drier air will set us up for a very pleasant weekend, including lots of sunshine and cooler temperatures. In fact, latest data still suggests we can expect to wake up to the 50s Sunday and/ or Monday morning(s).
Before we enjoy the pleasant weekend weather, the first of a series of storm complexes will approach Wednesday morning. Mesoscale Convective Complexes (MCCs) can be a true pain for short-term modeling to handle, but the overall idea this evening is for the first of (2) complexes to impact parts of the region Wednesday morning.
This is an idea what the radar may look like around 9a. This would be the same complex that will deal quite the blow to portions of the eastern Plains and upper Mid West tonight (localized damaging straight line winds will be an issue to our NW). Thankfully, we expect weakening of this complex as it dives off to the SE, in our general direction.
We’ll go through a quiet period during the afternoon hours before a second surge of storms takes aim on the region tomorrow night into Thursday morning (again, understanding we’ll have to “sure up” timing as we go).
Additional storm complexes will follow Thursday into Friday before that drier air gets here. Some of these could be strong to severe.
While rainfall amounts won’t be uniform, there’s the potential for some neighborhoods to get 2″-3″ of rain between now and week’s end (where storms train).
Looking ahead, after a dry weekend and open to next week, indications point towards a return of wet and active times as we approach Day 10. Long range ensemble data backs up the wet, stormy look nicely, and there’s really no end in sight…
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.
