Thursday Storms: Will They Happen?

Today was a warm and somewhat humid day. This brought some instability to the area, but we never saw that spark in the atmosphere to pop any storms. I tweeted a picture earlier today showing some tiny showers that tried to become a big deal, but never made it.

I think a couple days ago most weather nerds probably circled Thursday as our best chance of storms for the week, but I'm so hesitant to say that'll be the case. Tomorrow is a huge boom or bust day. Let's look at what dictates that:

Early Morning MCS
Storms are firing in the Midwest tonight and eventually be making their way across the country. By morning I think the complex will be greatly decayed and I think it's truly a 50/50 shot whether we see any thunder at all out of this corpse:

So does this MCS become anything? If it's mostly a shell of it's former Midwestern self, I think that sets us up for possible afternoon development. I think a weaker disturbance gives us a better chance at afternoon and evening storms.

Clearing Out Those Debris Clouds
A weaker morning system should allow clouds to clear out, allowing instability to build in the afternoon. Unlike today, we will have a forcing element tomorrow as a second disturbance moves with the quick west to east flow.

Looking at the NAM it shows partly cloudy conditions tomorrow afternoon out ahead of the next disturbance:

I think if a scenario like this verifies, we'll have a chance at decent storms in the late afternoon and evening hours.

CAPE and Shear
I've already said we're going to have that spark in the atmosphere, but there will also be instability and shear to help these storms build. Current model runs support 1500 J/kg of CAPE with 0-6km shear over 50kts. What that means is storms should be able to build tall and mature (CAPE) and once they do, they'll rotate (shear).

Remember, a rotating meso doesn't always mean a tornado forms. But the potential will be there, although I think high winds and hail would be a safer bet.

I'll post and tweet tomorrow if our conditions become favorable for a fun afternoon. Keep checking back!