The image to the right shows the next storm system that will affect our area starting late Thursday and into Friday. The system appears to lack strong upper level winds but the low pressure trough that’s strengthening will tap into a moist air mass and something called “low level jet” which is a core of winds that develop in the bottom of the atmosphere and reach their peak late at night. I would expect a few convective complexes to move across the region as early as Thursday night into Friday morning and then again Friday night into Saturday morning. Damaging winds would be the main concern and given the time of year… severe weather will be likely. Any leftover boundaries could spark a shower or two Saturday afternoon depending on when the moisture gets scoured out. Right now, early in the day holds the best chance for rain.
Then we move on to a quieter pattern. The next system is high pressure and it’s a big one.
The high pressure will strengthen and dominate the second half of the weekend and much of next week. The “northwest flow” is troubling on the NE side of the ridge. Current thinking is that the northwest flow will stay just out of our area. It’s an area that favors “surprise storm complexes” and currently looks like it’ll stay around Illinois, but we’ll need to watch it close.
Then there’s the next system after that….
As always… model accuracy is terrible after 7-days. (You could argue this model… the Global Forecast Solution is awful after 4 days at times) Anyway… the models are picking up on another wholesale pattern change somewhere around the 27th of April. But again… uncertainty abounds that far out.
In the short-term… we can count on rain late this week and early this weekend, and then an extended stretch of calm and quiet weather for early next week.
Garrett
