There is a High Risk (66% - 84%) Risk of Severe Weather for southeastern and east-central portions of the WMIWX Coverage Area Torday. A Significant Risk (41% - 65%) of Severe Weather fills in the remaining portions. Tornado Watch issuance is expected within the next hour or so.
The bottom line, while not zero, the Tornado Risk for today has been reduced for the Greater Grand Rapids area. Further south and east the risk is still in place. Prefrontal convection will limit the destabilization of the atmosphere ahead of the cold front and associated short-wave trough.
As such, we have opted to remove the High Risk delineation from our the Grand Rapids metro area and it has been moved southeast to account for the now larger tornado threat in that area,. A large Significant Risk swath is still in place across a large part of the state now including the Grand Rapids metro area. Damaging wind gusts to 70mph, large hail (possibly considerable), and a few isolated tornadoes are possible.
Thermodynamics across the region are improving as the surface warm front continues to lift to the north and northeast from Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. Surface temperatures along and ahead of this front are topping 70 degrees. This front is currently positioned just to the north and east of Grand Rapids. Dew points at the surface measure in the low 60's this morning in the wake of the warm front with associated dew point depressions of about 10 degrees. Surface instability is rather modest and is only forecasted to reach to about 500 J/kg throughout the day today.
Kinematics are still favorable for the development of some severe wind gusts and possibly a Tornado or two with a strong jet favoring low-level and modestly curved clockwise hodographs.
Inhibiting factors, as previously mentioned, is the early morning convection that a large part of the state is seeing this morning and the lack of post-convection destabilization ahead of the approaching Cold Front.
Possible hazards in the risk area include frequent lightning and torrential rainfall, widespread damaging wind gusts of 60 MPH and small - large hail events up to quarter size in diameter likely, a few tornadoes, moderate flash flooding, scattered damaging wind gusts up to 75 MPH and very large hail events up to 2 inches in diameter. Possible Considerable Severe (CONSVR) Impacts Include: Isolated damaging winds gusts over 80 MPH and giant hail events in excess of baseball size in diameter and an extremely isolated strong (EF-2+) and/or long-track tornado or two is possible, especially in southeast lower Michigan.
Follow WMIWX on Twitter @westmi.wx for updates throughout the day. Updates will also be posted below.
Forecaster Information:
Graphic: Jonah
Discussion: Jonah
Comments