5/4 – Britt’s “Warm & Humid” Wednesday Afternoon Forecast

Aside from a normal start to summer and high temps well above normal values, we will throw several thunderstorms on the pile for Thursday night into Friday morning. Instability is definitely in play for this with the capability for a few strong or severe t-storms. Guidance suggests a MCS/squall line feature that will develop over NE Texas Thursday night will be quite supportive of severe. As this feature moves into our area around midnight going into Friday morning, we could see a few thunderstorms have some strong downbursts up to severe limits. We will keep the marginal risk of severe in place since this should be a good and well placed risk level and area from SPC. Even though tornadic activity has not been mentioned, there is an outside possibility of this occurring. But the main variable looks to be damaging wind gusts. Heavy rainfall will be associated with these cells as moisture flow will be close to 2″ and the frontal boundary will begin to fall along an east-west orientation as it moves very close to the northern portion of the area and stalls Friday. This boundary will at the very least be responsible for keeping Friday cloudy with a few showers moving along it during the day.

If you missed the Thunder Rolls last weekend then get ready for this weekend as The Heat is On. Models are in really good agreement and they all agree, this weekend and early next week will be Hot Hot Hot.

Heading into the weekend, we will see the closed low continue pushing east through the Ohio Valley and then dig across the east coast and into the Atlantic on Sunday. Northwest flow will remain in place Saturday but stout mid-level high-pressure will slide into the area by Sunday. The northwest flow will try to push a weak front into the area Saturday but it will likely stall right over the area. This front may be the last chance of any real rain through the first half of next week.