Tuesday afternoon

Well, I said that these summer convective thunderstorm outbreaks fade fast after midnight.  And fade it did!  Hoping for a good soaking rain, we ended up with just .03″ at the airport.  Even those spots that got those thunderstorms last night didn’t get much rain – just power outages.

This afternoon we still find ourselves in the Storm Prediction Center’s slight risk area for severe storms.  And from what I saw around Noon most of the media seems to be playing right along with it.  (A bit of an aside…if your job is to predict severe thunderstorms you WILL  predict severe thunderstorms.  If they fail to occur, it doesn’t matter because your colleagues over at the National Weather Service will be happy to verify them for you.  Years ago, the NWS informal motto was “A few trees down do not a severe thunderstorm make.”  Now, two downed trees counts to “verify” a “severe” thunderstorm.  My how things change.)

Back to this afternoon, even though many of our human forecasters are still looking for severe thunderstorms, the forecast models are not!  As mentioned  in yesterday’s post, the primary energy and moisture would push drier air in this afternoon.  And that’s the case.  What’s left is a very weak cold front over southern Indiana pushing SE.  Instability is low, convergence weak, humidity dropping and any significant upper air energy is long gone.  I’ll go with the models and put any evening rain chance at less than 20%.  And severe weather just does not appear to be a threat.   (But I’d still like to see some rain.)