Severe Weather Possible

Good evening folks. After a weak cold front moved through northeast Ohio earlier today bring mostly clouds and very little precip with it. A ridge aloft is already building into the great lakes region. High pressure will be building off the East Coast allowing for a return flow out of the southwest  to develop by Thursday morning.  Winds will be gusty. A warm front will than try to push northward during the day. Current models bring the warm front just north of Lake Erie. Winds around H925 will be increasing to around 55kts. This combined with breaks in the clouds will allow the winds to reach the surface. This will have to be watched. The cold front will than reach the region late in the evening.

Latest guidance continues to show the threat for severe storms across the region. SPC has the area in a slight risk form around the I-70 area and south. This seems correct based on the amount of snow cover north of that area that will help limit severe weather and how warm the temps get.

 

Looking at the latest model data and it is still showing the LLJ(low level jet) increasing during the evening(which is when the LLj is the most active) which will help keep the storms going. This will also lead to shear. This may cause a few spin up's along the QLCS(Quasi-linear convective system ). We will most likely a damaging wind threat more than anything with this system.

As you can tell in the second picture that the LLJ continues to get stronger as the night goes on. This will lead to more wind damage.

Shear values will be also good for a few isolated spin up's also. We will need to watch this closely tomorrow.

Another thing we will have to watch is the winds at H500. They will be strong and this will allow for divergence aloft which will aid in developing the storms. We will also have to watch the vort max as that will also aid in some enhancement in the storms.

Last but not least is the amount of rain we will see. The map below is a 3hr rainfall total map. As you can tell there will be a lot of rain with these heavier thunderstorms.  This combined with snow melt will lead to rapid flooding. There are flood watches already issued for parts of Ohio.

So overall expect to see temps increasing to the upper 50s across southern Ohio and lower 50s across northern Ohio tomorrow. There could be a few showers with the warm front passage. Make sure you are weather ready with your NOAA weather radio..and emergency kits incase you lose power or you need to take shelter. Make sure you stay up on the latest with the local NWS or TV stations.

Forecaster- Bryan Polivka