Friday, May 1, 2009

Update On Severe Potential

The front (indicated by the white line) will continue to reside to the north and west of our area today. More numerous showers and thunderstorms will be concentrated near this front, however, a renegade shower or thunderstorm will be possible through the day today.


The front will creep closer to the area for Saturday and give us a better chance for more showers and a few thunderstorms.


Jet stream winds will be strong enough to provide some speed shear (winds increasing with height). Also, with winds from the S/SW at the surface, and from the W farther up in the atmosphere, there will be some directional shear as well.


Strong to severe thunderstorms will be possible Saturday. The key to the forecast is sunshine. If we see sunshine, it will destabilize the atmosphere and intenisfy the storms.

NASCAR Weather In The Past



It always seems like rain is in the area whenever NASCAR comes into town. After digging through our climate data, it has been split over the past couple years.

May of 2008 was actually really nice with partly cloudy skies and highs in the lower 80s. It was a different scenario for the race in May of 2007. Isolated showers were in the area on Friday, with scattered showers on Saturday.

I'll have an update on our thunderstorm chances for today and tomorrow here shortly.