0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Often times this time of year the Monsoon kicks off which displaces the Sonora Ridge aka the SW Ridge either to the Pacific Northwest or to our region or both. At least through the first week of August it looks like the SW Ridge stays put in the Desert Southwest and builds up the west coast leading to troughs in Central part of the USA that make it even our way. If that patterns holds much longer into August then the Gulf Coast will probably get popped with multiple hurricane threats because anything that is able to make it into the Gulf or Caribbean Sea will want to take that weakness. Although that gives us relief from the heat that could lead to even worse consequences for us and those to our south later on down the line.
OHX posted a GFS image of progged PWATs for the greater TN area a few days ago and I think the highest value was 2.65. That's an insane amount of water in the atmosphere...near record levels they said.
...Lower Ohio and Tennessee Valley vicinity... Sizable spread lingers within model output concerning the synoptic and sub-synoptic developments Saturday through Saturday night. In general, though, it appears that the lower/mid tropospheric perturbation will be accompanied by 30-50 kt southerly to southwesterly flow in the 850-500 mb layer, across the warm sector of a modest, slowly deepening and northeastward migrating surface low. Although mid-levels may be relatively warm, boundary-layer moisture characterized by surface dew points in excess of 70f may still contribute to CAPE of 1000-2000+ J/kg by Saturday afternoon. This should be sufficient to support the initiation of vigorous thunderstorm development. Given this environment, including favorable ambient vertical vorticity, and perhaps modest clockwise curved low-level hodographs, some supercell structures posing a risk for tornadoes appear possible, in additional to upscale growing convection capable of producing potential damaging wind gusts.
This is associated with a Marginal Risk of Severe Weather for Day 3.
I have yet to see enough to even wet the pavement. Crazy.