Iowa Hit With More Tornadoes Today, Watching Things Closely Here at Home Tomorrow

What a beautiful day it is again today in Lafayette. Yesterday was picture-perfect and you can see the beautiful sunset over the bell tower at Purdue. But it is late May and we all know this can change in a hurry this time of year. Based on the latest models we still have thunderstorms in the forecast Friday and Friday night. If a squall line does develop it looks like it will hold off until later Friday and Friday evening. Despite the SPC upgrading our severe weather risk on Friday and Friday night to the moderate range, I think we will likely see some scattered strong storms but severe thunderstorms producing damaging wind and large hail will be isolated in nature. Here are a few reasons why.

The main surface low lambasting Iowa with tornadoes today will quickly lift toward Duluth, Minnesota taking a lot of the upper-level energy and spin in the atmosphere producing those horrific storms today with it. This is good news for us. Also, we have a lot of dry air in the atmosphere for this storm system to overcome. This is courtesy of an autumn-like May pattern which has brought our chilliest May in 11 years. The big question is how much Gulf moisture we will have to work with. Right now it looks like the deep, tropical Gulf moisture will be blocked by a sprawling upper-level high pressure located in Alabama making it feel like summer in the deep South. This Dixie high pressure will keep our dewpoints or actual humidities lower which would limit the amount of strong storms in our area. So if you do not like strong thunderstorms you may feel like singing Sweet Home Alabama. But, here in Indiana we know that we can't start singing until we are given the all clear. We are not totally out of the woods yet. Your pre-cast is on the way with more. In the meantime, enjoy the baseball sectional out a Central Catholic for the top 2 teams in the state. The weather looks terrific! Enjoy!
Now for our special guests:

Hello my name is Brian Wolfe and I am the new weekend meteorologist here at WLFI-TV. I am a Synoptic Meteorology student at Purdue University. It is my opinion that the MCS that will move into the area over night on Thursday will erode away in the dry air of the high pressure system that is moving south, out of our area. By this occuring, I feel that we will be able to get rid of the debris clouds from that and crank some moisture into the atmosphere. This will lead to the dewpoints rising into the mid 60's and the temperature around 82. All of this should de-stabilize the atmosphere enough to have a moderate risk for severe weather to move in late Friday afternoon and into the evening hours.

Great job Wolfman! I am really excited to have you on our weather team. We will have tons of fun tracking storms and the great part is you like snow too! By the way, does this mean you will give up your part-time gig on CSI Miami? Now for our second weather guest. This goes to show you there are a lot of question marks on this system and you need to stay tuned for the latest.

Hello all, this is Kevin Burris, the new weather intern at Channel 18. I am also a meteorology student at Purdue University. I'm going to forecast conservative for the storms on late Friday. The vorticity predicitons for tomorrow are bare, so we might see some rain showers, possibly heavy at times, but no severe thunderstorms. However, better safe than sorry, so keep an eye on the sky. It is Indiana.

Thanks again to Brian and Kevin. You will certainly see Brian again on the air and I will make sure to have them both back here on the blog in the future. Now on to today's precast!