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Hey there, West Michigan.
I'm meteorologist Michael Baron.
Thanks for joining us
live here this afternoon.
As we keep a close eye on potenl
severe weather that could be
impacting West Michigan very shortly.
Just making sure we are live on all of
our platforms does look like we.
If you're joining us on Faceboo,
YouTube or on 13 plus,
this is going to be the place te
to keep an eye on coverage throughout
the rest of the afternoon as of
course things here could get a
little bit noisy in the coming hours.
So let's go ahead and start wit.
With the alerts that we have
in place right now,
a severe thunderstorm watch is n
place for most of West Michigan.
That's going to go until 7:00 o'clock
tonight as you head down to branch in St.
Joseph counties, along the India
border and down into Indiana,
there is a tornado watch.
That's what we're expecting the
stronger risk for severe storms to be,
but that's not to say we don't e
our own concerns this afternoon.
This morning the severe weather threat
for West Michigan was upgraded o
a level 2 out of five for most f
the region except for the Lakes.
They're still under a level one out of five.
Wind and hail remain our primary
concerns as we head into the afternoon
heavy rains and the possibility for a
spin up tornado that cannot be ruled out.
Also concerns that we will keep a close
eye on as we head deeper into the afternoon.
When it comes to what we're loog
at on the radar at this hour,
no warnings just yet here in West Michigan,
but they are not far off.
As we take a look over the Lakeshore,
you can see that there's already
several areas of thunderstorms pushing
through and a couple marine advisories
down toward Berrien County as w.
There's severe weather already
down in Indiana.
You can see a severe thunderstom
warning down in portions of norn
Indiana just to the southwest of South
Bend for a pretty strong cell that's.
Going to be working its way
toward the north and east,
this cell here working its way o
Berrien County through New Buffalo and
heading to the northwest to South Bend.
No warning as of yet,
at least not on land.
There is a marine weather alert
with this storm over the water.
I would not be surprised to sees
strengthen pretty quickly as it moves
over land here this afternoon ad
really the much the same for ths
entire line of storms that stres
back up through Sheboygan Overlake Michigan.
Let me go and put this in motion
over the last two hours.
You can see these storms have ry
just started to fire up in a.
About the last 30-40 minutes hee
across West Michigan and we're g
to continue to see a developing
trend this afternoon.
Unfortunately,
we've seen some sunshine out th,
which is not great news when yoe
looking at a severe weather situation,
that means you have the risk
for some stronger storms.
Let's pop over to one of
our tower cameras here.
We'll go to the Walker Tower ca.
It's fairly cloudy at the momen,
but overall we've seen a little bit of
that sunshine poke through this afternoon.
We'll head over to Muskegon.
You can see the overcast ahead of the clouds,
but look down at the ground.
You see how bright everything i.
It's not a thick cloud layer.
So what we're doing is we're
letting in sunlight,
we're letting in heat,
and that's generating
instability this afternoon.
And that's what we're going to h
out for when it comes to this line of
storms and for the intensificat.
That we're expected to see to strong,
possibly severe levels in aboute
next hour or two as storms move onshore.
Of course we'll be tracking all
those storms as they develop
right here at 1300 side.
Let's go back to the radar
now big picture here,
this low pressure system that's
causing these storms out over
Wisconsin and Minnesota that's
going to be sliding our way as
we head to the next 24 hours.
What we're expecting is only one round
of severe storms though it's gog
to be this round that comes thrh
between now and about 7-8 o'clock tonight.
That will be the strong one.
We do keep rain chances,
possibly some Thunder in the forecast
all the way through Tuesday mor,
but this should be the only roud
of strong to severe storms.
Let's go and take a look at those alerts.
Just to remind you,
it's been quite a while since we've had
storm activity here in West Michigan.
We're looking at thunderstorm warnings.
There's several categories there
including radar indicated a tornado possible.
That's a pretty serious one and
considerable threat that would e
for things like very damaging wd
or large hail tornado warnings.
Of course they can go through
radar indicated confirmed or hir
threats from there,
but we're not expecting too much
in the way of a potential for
tornado this afternoon.
Very low wind going to be our big concern.
As we head to the next several hours,
let's go and step through hour by hour.
The forecast here,
the storms over the lake at
this hour will push toward the
shoreline between 3:00 and 4:00,
o'clock those storms pushing into West
Michigan as we head past that time period,
intensifying with the warmer,
humid air over West Michigan.
Those storms continue to grow as they push
off toward the east as we get toward five,
6:00 o'clock tonight,
and then once we get into the evening hours,
our severe weather threat is
pretty much done for the evenin.
It's only this one round of strong storms.
While we do keep rain,
possibly some Thunder,
in the cards through
tonight and into tomorrow,
it's only this first round
of severe weather that we
have to worry about.