Upcoming Severe?

Looking increasingly likely that there will be some severe weather event across the midwest on Wednesday, May 13th. Strong dynamic system has been showing up consistently on the forecast models for quite some time now.

Still 78 hours for things to go wrong, but right now it's looking like there could be a decent tornado event across eastern Iowa, Missouri and all over Illinois. As such with these dynamic systems, questions to be answered will be the amount of morning precipitation and cloud cover. These things generally work themselves out however, and if things play out the way they appear now I'd expect to see tornadic supercells across the three state region Wednesday evening.

As typical luck would have it, I do have a final exam that day. However, I will be done no later than 1, so should it stay in the location shown now I -should- have no problem getting into position by initiation time, or shortly thereafter. If storms are firing before that time, it will likely not end up being a huge event anyway. Typically you'll want the cap to hold off any thunderstorm development til around 3 or 4 to get maximum instability. With a strong dynamic system that is especially key, as with too little instability and too much shear you'll end up with garbage that never organizes.

We'll see how future model runs play out, but for now I'll eyeball west central Illinois, early Wednesday afternoon.