3 Consecutive Days of Severe Thunderstorms Possible

It appears are first big week for severe storms is coming up tomorrow through Wednesday.  A powerful summer storm will move across the Plains into the Midwest tomorrow, bringing a 4 day period (Today, but not here) of severe storms with tornadoes, large hail, and damaging winds across the Plains, Midwest, Great Lakes, and parts of Southern Ontario. As the warm front clears parts of southern Ohio today, there will be a slight chance for some isolated severe storms today, but it does not appear that it will be anything major.

Tomorrow could be an interesting day, with the warm front reaching the Ohio/Michigan border by the early afternoon.  Shear should be quite high tomorrow, supporting storm organization, and some scattered storms capable of large hail and damaging winds will be likely.  An isolated tornado can't be ruled out.

Tuesday, and Wednesday also have a lot of potential, but I'll cover those later tonight

Severe Storms Possible Today

After a very dry start to June, there is a decent chance of severe storms today in Ohio, especially in the western portions of the state.  Leftover rain from an MCS is moving rapidly out of NW/West Ohio, which will clear out by 11AM.  This will lead to strong surface heating as a warm front moves up to the Ohio/Michigan border by the early afternoon.  A weak surface low will track into lower Michigan, with helicity values reaching 300m2/s2. This combined with shear around 30-40kts will allow for some isolated supercell development along the warm front, as long as there is decent lift to spawn those storms.

Sound familiar?  It's almost the exact same setup as June 5th, 2010.  This is an analogue that I never expected to use again- but the similarities are there.  There are two big differences though, which will prevent this from being as big of an event as that was.  First is shear- there is very little shear south of the warm front today.  Second, is Low Pressure strength. That event had a 1004mb low, this has about a 1010mb low.  However, the timing of frontal positions, etc. is extremely similar to that day.

Pay close attention later today.  Storms that develop along the warm front, while still is a moderately sheared atmosphere, have the potential to rotate very quickly, and proudce a tornado. The chances for tornadoes are still low (5% on the SPC outlook), and the main threats are damaging winds and large hail from multicell clusters.  

Stay tuned to the SPC and your local NWS forecast office for any updates on watches and warnings.