Sunday, June 8, 2014

Isolated Severe Storms Across the Valley this Afternoon/Evening

Sunday (6/8) 10am Blog
9am Surface Map (COD)
Today's the beginning of what looks to be an active week storm wise.  Low pressure swinging across the Ohio Valley will continue to work east towards parts of the northern mid-Atlantic.  Winds out ahead of it are already streaming out of the south across our entire area.  This is bringing in humid air and increasing instability.  These two factors will combine to help produce some thunderstorm activity this afternoon into the evening.  A weak ridge of high pressure right along the eastern seaboard should keep the best instability and stronger storms away from coastal areas.  The best shot will be for areas along and west of the Blue Ridge in NC, VA, WV, western MD, western/central PA, and eastern OH.

6z NAM Reflectivity for 1pm Sunday (PSU E-Wall)
The short range models seem to be onto two separate chances.  The first should be early this afternoon as a few pop up out ahead of the approaching low as a lee-side trough forms along the Appalachians.  The second won't be until later this evening as the low passes and its trailing front brings through another round of convection.
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6z NAM Reflectivity for 9pm Sunday (PSU E-Wall)
It's worth noting that any convection that does fire will be capable of becoming strong to severe.  Low level winds will veer with height, leading to the possibility of some rotation within stronger cells.  With that said, speed shear is looking pretty weak.  Still, with any kind of low-level directional shear, tornadic threat is non-zero.Here's the latest Hazardous Weather Outlook discussion from the National Weather Service in Sterling, VA:
Once again..this won't be a huge widespread severe weather outbreak, but I believe somewhere will get a pretty nasty storm out of this.  Keep up with your local National Weather Service for any watches/warnings that may be issued the rest of the day!
6z NAM sounding for 11am Sunday (COD) *directional shear wind barbs circled

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