In true Kentucky weather fashion, we are going from cold temperatures on Monday to the threat of severe weather coming up on Thursday. First off, temperatures will rebound today as most of us will hit 60 degrees for the high with mostly sunny skies.
Our focus shifts to Thursday as a system will drop into the area bringing gusty winds and the threat for strong to severe thunderstorms.
This is the latest from the Storm Prediction Center this morning. Most of the Commonwealth is placed in that level 1 “Marginal” risk while a level 2 “Slight” risk is posted in the western most part of the state. Check out the projected wind gusts for Thursday below….
Some folks could get wind gusts in excess of 60mph Thursday, and this is non thunderstorm wind gusts. I would not be surprised to see a Wind Advisory be issued for parts of the state on Thursday.
Latest run of the GFS model shows a line of storms moving through something late Thursday afternoon and into the evening hours. It is still too early to get into specifics for one particular area. The big threat with any strong to severe storms will be the threat of damaging winds. We could see wind damage during the day Thursday outside of any thunderstorms. Make sure to have any loose outdoor furniture or other outdoor decorations tied down and secured.
Those that read my post yesterday seen this map which shows the projected CAPE values for the area. CAPE or Convective Available Potential Energy shows the “fuel” available for storms to feed off of. There was not much in the way of CAPE showing up yesterday, but that has since changed as you can tell in the map above. While it does not look like much, we do not need extreme CAPE values for strong to severe thunderstorms.
This is something else we look at for severe weather days. This is the winds in the upper atmosphere which is important for severe weather development. While the CAPE values are not very high, there is quite a bit of upper wind energy that will help support the development of strong to severe storms. I don’t think this will be any kind of major severe weather outbreak for us, but a few strong to severe storms are possible for Thursday.
I will keep a close watch on this and post updates as more information is available.
