Friday, June 13, 2008

Friday the 13th Lives Up to Its Dubious Distinction, Oshkosh Hit Hard

Updated storm potential as of 10 a.m. Friday


I am not superstitious but maybe I should be. It will be our 9th Friday in a row with rain. That is fact! The other 8 Fridays did not occur on the 13th but this has become much more than a trend or pattern. It seems you can set your watch to the storms every Friday and today will be no different. I think we could have several rounds of thunderstorms today. We woke up with thunder as expected this morning. We will likely have another round by mid-afternoon, and a third round of thunderstorms during the evening. The sun is out and destabilizing the atmosphere.
Oshkosh, Wisconsin was hit hard last night with flooding and a tornado was reported in Mayville off Highway 67. These are areas I am familiar with and had play by play reports from family on the phone last night. Everybody is okay up there, but there is plenty of flooding and many folks could not even get into their neighborhoods. Sound familiar. The red areas indicate doppler estimated rainfall amounts from the Green Bay National Weather Service Office in the 2 to 4 inch range. The purple areas were swamped with between 4 and 6 inches of rain! I am glad everybody is safe. I show you this because I am really worried about training thunderstorms and flooding here at home tonight and already we have flash flood watches out for much of our viewing area. I know the forecast is calling for one to two inches of rain, but we all know with thunderstorms there can be locally higher amounts.

One of the problems with our front is that it will be moving through our area today at less than 10 mph. I could whip right by it on my gas-saving bicycle. This front will be paralleling our upper-level winds and at the same time it is dying out. These ingredients add up to a flood threat. This brings us to our second threat which will be wind damage.

If there is good news the lower level and mid-level winds are much weaker than last Friday by a good 15 to 25 mph. This means I do not expect a repeat of 80 mph wind gusts that ravaged areas of Crawfordsville and Frankfort. The wind is also unidirection from the surface to the upper-levels which tells me that our tornado threat will remain low. But here in Indiana we never say never when it comes to tornadoes and any severe thunderstorm has the potential of putting down a tornado. Now today as a surface wave moves along our dying front it could help add some shear to the environment which could put down a lone EF-0 tornado or gustnado most likely with wind speeds less than 85 mph. We are not expecting any of those devastating tornadoes we saw across the Plains on Wednesday night. We will keep you updated with Live Doppler 18 and Precision 18. Have that plan B and stay tuned and calm. Let me break down the percentages for you as of 10:20 a.m. This has the potential of occurring within 25 miles of your neighborhood:

Wind gusts of 35 to 45 mph: 55%

Wind gusts of 46 to 55 mph: 40%

Wind gusts of 58 mph or higher: 30%

Rainfall in excess of 2 inches: 40%

Rainfall in excess of 1 inch: 60%

Tornado EF-0: 5%

Tornado EF-1 (less than 2%)

Small hail: 10%

Large hail: 5% or less

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

as it has been for the last few fridays...the heaviest of the rain seems to hit as i enter one of my buildings on the south end of town! hopefully that will not be the case today!

there was some thunder and beautiful lightening this morning on the south side of lafayette (around 5:30-6am). luckily, the rain that came with it seemed to pass quickly!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the 5am prediction Justin! I will check back in frequently for updates, it is my daughter's 5th birthday so I hope we don't need to spend it in the basement later on!

ML

Anonymous said...

Well so far the worst of the storms is still forecasted to be here between 4:00pm and 9:00pm again we could still see some Sca-thunderstorms through out the day.
I'll keep you posted :)

Justin in Lafayette.

Anonymous said...

I hope you are right Justin, Its sunny right now, and very humid! Just adding fuel to the storms.

BTW: did you check out any of the sunscreen products for your dog???

Teri in Lafayette

Anonymous said...

Not yet I have been so busy the past few days just now getting a break but I will for sure and I thank you for telling me about them. Dont want my boy to get burned :)

Justin in Lafayette.

Anonymous said...

I'm seeing the svr-t-storm warnings pop up next door. Looks like we should start seeing them at around 3pm? Just a guess though.

I am just glad to see the chances of tornadoes to be low.

Like Mike said last night, after we make it through today/tonights rain...its gonna good weather for awhile and next week looks yummy.

Anonymous said...

If you look at the radar you will see the squall line starting to move are way moveing ENE around
29mph as of now clouds are at 450 to 500FT with hail will keep you posted.

Justin in Lafayette.

Anonymous said...

Why can't I make the tiny radar bigger? It is not the same when I increase the size, so I can't see the ETA for this cell!

ML

Anonymous said...

The radar looks scary!!!! Lets hope this line misses us!!! Like Mike always reminds us be ready for PLAN B

Teri in Lafayette

Anonymous said...

EVERY ONE BE SAFE STAY CALM!!! I'M NOT CALM THIS STORM WORRIES ME :{

Anonymous said...

Weather radio just sounded off with a severe thunderstorm warning for fountain vermillion and warren co, will keep you posted.

Justin in Lafayette.