Unsettled Week Ahead.

Unsettled week ahead. As you can see from the qpf (quantitative precipitation forecast) which is valid through this coming Friday, we have a decent shot at receiving some badly needed rainfall during the coming week. Unfortunately, it appears that the western counties will likely miss out on most of that and quite frankly they need it much worse than we do.

At any rate, there will be a number of systems embedded in the fast flow aloft that will have the potential for producing showers and storms. The first one will be pushing a cool front our way late Tuesday. In fact, a dry line will be setting up along I-35 by Tue afternoon and the cool front is expected to move in behind that by the late afternoon or early evening hours. This is a similar set-up to what we had last Thursday, but there are some differences, most notably in the upper air parameters. Even so, it still looks like there will be a risk of severe storms late Tuesday as mentioned in the morning discussion. It also still appears that the best chances will be over the more eastern counties.

You may have noticed that I have removed the rain chances for Monday. There is still a very slight chance that a few isolated showers or storms may form in the extreme eastern counties, but the chances are too small to put on the graphics. Have also removed all mention of rain on Wednesday as it appears that we will be between systems and with a northerly wind and cooler conditions, we should be stable throughout the day.

However, the frontal boundary that will be moving across the state late Tuesday looks like it will hang up south of us by Wed night, start moving back northward on Thursday, and then back south by late Friday and hang up again through Sunday. This boundary bouncing around the area will maintain adequate moisture which together with a series of disturbances aloft will provide chances of showers and storms for the Thursday-Sunday time frame. Since this is April, any given day could also have a severe weather threat, which unfortunately may include Easter Sunday. This is very preliminary, the longer range guidance has a history of flipping around, and there has not been much consistency up to this point. So, this is certainly subject to change as better run to run and inter-model consistency hopefully begins to sort things out over the next few days.

In the meantime, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot