Sunday, April 10, 2011

OFFICIAL FORECAST: April 10 Severe Storm Outbreak

I am in quite a trouble spot here.
The National Weather Service and Storm Prediction seem to be going toe-to-toe with commercial weather agencies.
That is why I am choosing this time to issue an official forecast.

FORECAST
It is possible a couple storms will develop ahead of the cold front. If they should develop, given the instability, they would quickly become strong to severe.
As the cold front moves through, the main tornado threat will shift to the Wisconsin/North IL area.
There will be damaging thunderstorms in those areas.
The threat should end by midnight, CDT.
A main factor will be sunshine, which gives out instability.
Right now, there is considerable weak cloud cover that went unpredicted by the NWS.
Overall, this system is very hard to forecast.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would you say that along the Wisconsin/Illinois border near Lake Michigan has a strong threat of a tornado? Or the Chicago area?

Andrew said...

Wisconsin will be a big gamble. There is an elevated risk of tornadoes.
I believe the WI/IL border does have a somewhat elevated risk of a tornado.
The Chicago area does as well.

Shannon said...

Andrew

Have you taken into account the outflow boundaries from last nights MCS in N. Iowa & Wisconsin area? I cannot find a satellite image that clearly depicts the boundary, but I am sure with the wind/mixing going on, it has worked it's way back north. In the Central Illinois region, there appears to be some capping going on, so any development that occurs will be explosive when it happens. I expect any SC storms that form will quickly transition into a linear squall line. I do feel that the Northern third of Illinois into Wisconsin is prime for SC development as well.

Andrew said...

After listening to a weather briefing, it appears surface convergence will not be significant enough to generate a strong tornado threat.
There is still considerable uncertainty regarding many factors, including timing and threats.
According to the models, it appears a few cells will form, and eventually a squall line.