Summary: We've been tracking the possibility of severe weather and flooding for today and tomorrow for the last several days and not a whole lot has changed; there remains low chances for strong to severe storms today and possibly better chances tomorrow and a low chance for minor flooding on both days.
Today (Thursday) 08/15/2024:
After a mostly cloudy morning rain showers will move in this afternoon across the area fueled by a seasonable atmospheric wind pattern. The lack of instability building from daytime heating (caused by cloud cover) and modest strength, at best, of said wind pattern will largely inhibit the risk for a more robust/widespread severe threat today. That said, as the strength of the wind pattern increases to at least some degree overnight tonight it is certainly possible that this may be enough to allow a couple of storms to organize and become locally strong to severe posing a threat for damaging wind gusts of 40 MPH, to perhaps as much as 60 MPH, and some small to large hail to around 1 inch in diameter. The tornado threat should stay off to our South and West given the lack of surface instability and stronger low-level shear.
The most likely timing for any strong to severe storms will be from late this afternoon through the early morning hours tomorrow with a slight favoritism to the overnight period as compared to this afternoon.
Tomorrow (Friday) 08/16/2024:
Tomorrow's details are still largely uncertain and highly dependent on the performance of today's showers and thunderstorms and how fast they move out of the area on Friday morning. If storms move out more quickly on Friday morning and/or are more isolated/scattered in nature then we may see chances for severe weather to occur locally increase Friday afternoon. If the opposite occurs and storms move out more slowly and/or are more widespread in nature then chances for local severe weather will decrease.
Right now it's 50/50 as to what will occur and the SPC has maintained its level 1/5 "Marginal Risk" for the area and we think that covers the uncertainty pretty well. Bottom line is that we could see this risk increase or we could see no severe weather on Friday afternoon.
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