Hey everybody, it's WCSC chief
meteorologist Brad Panovich.
Boy, we've finally we're getting some rain
across the area, but maybe not enough.
The drought monitor just came out today and
drought conditions as expected or worsening,
so today's rain is really important.
But I also know a lot of people have
outdoor plans, graduations, parties
going on over the next couple of days,
so the rain chances are not always the
greatest thing when they have bad timing.
So here's a look at the pattern.
You could see a lot of scattered showers
and thunderstorms across the southeast.
We've got this kind of stalled.
Front, which is basically just to the West,
and that front seems to be just kind
of sitting basically to our West.
Not a big hurry to move,
and that's going to be a big question
mark for tomorrow about how much rain
we see linger into the afternoon.
I'm going to pause this right here
and what I'm going to do is I'm going
to turn on the day one what we call
convective outlook shows you the chance
for severe storms like the clouds on here.
So let me turn those off real quick just
to show you to see all the area in yellow.
Kind of a big area of low risk.
And again I can't rule out a
severe storm today.
But with the amount of cloud cover.
It's probably going to turn things so
one thing to watch out for if you see the
sun come out just for an hour or two,
or get a break that probably will
be just enough push to basically
ignite some stronger storms.
So that's something to keep an eye,
but you see the big area pretty much all
of the Carolinas under that low risk.
For severe storms this afternoon.
Again, the main threat is going
to be damaging winds,
lightning, and heavy rain,
so we're not looking at a huge tornado risk.
But as always,
I will tell you there is always a non zero
tornado risk in this situation which means.
Anytime you have a severe storm,
you can get a tornado spin up,
though the ingredients are completely there.
So let me show you the setup today based
on future cast over the next 48 hours.
So this is that short range,
high resolution, rapid refresh.
You can see it's already struggling
a little bit kind of indicating a
few more storms than there actually
there this morning,
but we'll go through time and show you
that there seems to be 2 distinct areas
of rain chances today from a Charlotte
East and then back into the mountains.
There seems to be some
kind of lull in between.
Now we have to see if that.
Fills in this afternoon,
but you can see as we get
towards three o'clock.
4:00 o'clock the peak heating of the day.
I do anticipate we'll see more
scattered storms developing again.
The thing about the setup
today is while everybody may
not see rain, if you're
under one of these storms,
the potential for very heavy rain is there.
You can see by 6-7 PM.
We've got a pretty good line that
tries to move across the area.
We go into the evening hours.
The rain is going to linger well
into tonight because remember,
there's a cold front somewhere right in here.
In fact, that cold front.
Is probably going to get hung up in the
mountains at some point tomorrow morning,
so whenever that happens that's going
to give us a chance of showers and
storms persisting into the overnight.
So this is 3:00 o'clock in the morning.
Boy, that's the perfect timing for rain.
Let's hope it continues to rain,
but tomorrow morning I was
getting some messages.
A lot of graduations happening
early tomorrow morning.
There is some rain around,
but I do think the worst will be
east of us and then we go into the
afternoon and it looks like the front
finally clears most of the area.
And I say finally because.
It looks like it might get
hung up somewhere in here,
and there's enough lingering instability.
I do think the highest chance
is going to be right in here.
That's going to be our big chance of rain,
but across the Piedmont,
don't be surprised if in the late
afternoon there's a least a pop-up
shower or thunderstorm at some points,
but the chances look to be pretty
low as we go through tomorrow,
so notice a much lower rain chance
and then we go into Saturday and I
think I'm going to stop this Saturday
morning when we run out of time here.
8:00 AM.
It does look like the front
is somewhere down here,
so it looks like the front gets stalled.
Basically right in here,
so that would be better conditions for
Saturday and Sunday and probably hotter.
It's probably going to be in the
mid to upper 80s 'cause we're
going to see more sunshine,
but we are now in that time of the year.
I almost can never put a 0% chance
of rain in the forecast just to be
completely transparent and honest
because enough heating and humidity,
even in a day where there's
not the perfect set up,
a little outflow boundaries and
differential heating on the mountains
lead trough all these little things can
actually help produce some scattered
showers or thunderstorms in the afternoon.
The chances that were usually.
About 20% and you kind of
know the routine here.
Summertime 3456 o'clock we're
going to see a pop-up storm,
but the big story here.
The next 48 hours I'll play this out
is the best chance of rain is today
and tonight as we go through Friday,
those rain chances diminish and you could
see even with this best rain chance,
there's going to be some areas that
will completely miss out on the rain.
And it looks like most areas
could end up with
maybe just a little bit of rain,
while others get absolutely dumped on.
That's the nature of afternoon scattered
storms in the summer, that's why.
Drought in the spring is never a great thing.
'cause you can't count on huge widespread
rainfall during this time of year.
It's always hit or miss.
You just hope there's enough of him
that you get more hits than misses.
Have a great Thursday everybody.
Of course, I'll be posting updates
throughout the afternoon if there
are any watches or warnings or any
pop up storms that become severe.
And, as always,
make sure you download the
WC&C Charlotte Weather app.
It'll give you a heads up
before anything else.