Hey everybody,
chief meteorologist Brian Pinocchio.
Well, we've got another round of strong,
possibly severe storms heading our
way for late Thursday into Friday.
It's kind of different than Monday.
It's not much of a tornado
threat compared to Monday.
There's still a chance,
but it's mainly straight line winds and
I'll talk about this as we get into it,
but it's a completely different setup,
so I don't want you to be thinking
it's going to be a very similar
setup to what we saw on Monday.
So here's the summer where
the risk today and tonight.
Not a big deal, right?
Pretty much to our West now tomorrow.
It's kind of interesting.
You see that severe weather risk?
To the West,
and that includes most of the mountains,
foothills and parts of the Piedmont.
So we're in technically
in that low end risk area,
and the reason we're seeing that
low end risk area right now is
because potentially we could
see some strong storms develop
late tomorrow in this vicinity,
especially late evening into
the maybe night time hours.
So it's really going to be tomorrow
night that we're going to watch,
and then we see the severe
weather risk for Friday.
Notice how we're in the low
risk over the Piedmont,
but then the Foothill.
The Sandhills into central North Carolina,
even parts of the Piedmont are in the
medium risk because that same front
is going to be moving across the area.
So where is this thing right now?
Well, let's look at it.
You can see it off to the West.
There's a couple bands this big
low pressure system right in here,
but you cannot see these spokes of energy
one there one here and then one here.
This one is just going to
provide rain overnight.
Not a big deal, some rain tomorrow morning.
This is the one that could produce
severe weather tomorrow evening.
56789 ten o'clock.
11:00 o'clock in the evening.
And then Friday mornings is right there.
So the kind of breakdown,
the timing of all that that's
what we're looking at.
So what type of severe weather
are we looking at?
Well,
primary concern here folks is
going to be straight line winds.
This is our biggest issue.
Followed next by flooding,
but there is a tornado risk now
the way that is ordered it's by the
number of events still could have a tornado,
but there's probably going to be
four or five times as many flood
wind reports than Tornado reports.
So and this is always the case and
we always worry about tornadoes
and people for good reason.
Get freaked out by tornadoes.
But telling you man,
most of the time wins and flooding
are going to be our primary concern.
Then hail and tornadoes.
But tornadoes get all the headlines
and sometimes we forget that damaging
severe thunderstorms can do a lot of damage.
Now what are we missing in this setup?
Could be some instability now
I'll show you what it
looks like on the wider view first.
So we go through tonight and I'm
going to stop this tomorrow morning.
There's going to be a warm front
right in here at some point.
Pushing through the area that warm front
is going to usher in the hot humid air.
Notice the rain in the morning,
so This is why the flash flood threat
is kind of high for the mountains.
We'd get the southeast.
We call up slope flow.
That pushes moisture up into the mountains.
That mountains lift it like a ramp
and we tend to see heavy rain,
so there's a pretty significant threat
for flash flooding in the mountains,
but this is the band we're watching
for later in the evening and look
at the times up in the corner there.
I'll stop it at noon, so you see the rain.
None of that.
I don't expect any of that to be too severe,
but we'll get closer to 3/4 in the afternoon.
Now we've got to start watching some
of these because the sun is out
with the warm front is way up here.
Now we're fully into that hot,
muggy, juicy air,
so any of these storms and
notice where they are,
where that low risk was in
the western part of our area.
Potentially some strong storms
in there pushing in.
And you can see that band
coming in around 7:00 o'clock,
even maybe all the way to
Charlotte 8-9 o'clock.
And then we go into the overnight.
Hours the front gets here early
Friday morning and there's another
round of strong storms right there.
I'm going to show you a closer
up view of this,
but I wanted to start wide first.
And then we go into the afternoon sun comes
out, could see additional pop-up storm.
Got a truck race going on tomorrow night.
Don't think it's a big deal.
Could see a passing shower but you can
see by then all that stuff is pushing out.
What are the ingredients we
could be missing in this?
Well, it's all about the storm fuel.
I'm going to move my head out
of the way here.
I'll move it over to the
other side real quickly.
So what you're looking at up there
we're basically looking at the wind
shear a trigger that the storm fuel,
heat and humidity how
much of that do we have?
Maybe not a whole lot depending
on the cloud cover,
but I don't think it's going to matter
because that warm front pushing north.
Even with cloudy skies,
we're certainly going to
have plenty of it around,
but I will tell you as I always say,
don't want to see the sun tomorrow.
We do not want to see it,
and here's why.
The thunderstorm fuel on our futurecast
tries to sneak up here tomorrow morning,
but then by about middle of the day,
we start to see some low end,
some moderate levels.
Look at some of that moderate coming
up around 5-6 o'clock,
so those cells that are
coming up in the evening.
That's why I said the evening.
Hours there are some juice there
for these to feed off of some
gasoline for those thunderstorms,
and then Friday morning watch
the big surge even with cloud
cover in the middle of the night.
That's a low level jet cranking
up some instability there,
so I time we wake up Friday morning there
could be strong storms in the morning,
so I don't expect it to
be an overnight event,
but you could wake up to some
strong storms on Friday morning
and then the system pushes East
some lingering instability.
But really,
by this time the front so far to the east.
That I'm not overly concerned,
so let's look at something that's
short range rapid refresh model.
So what I'm going to show you is the
future radar and the rotation tracks
from this high resolution model.
It's kind of unique to see this happen.
So tomorrow morning you wake
up there's that upslope flow.
I talked about 7:00 AM.
There's the moisture coming in.
This is probably under doing
the amount of rain that's going
to be falling in those areas.
We go into the middle of the day.
I'll stop around noon some scattered showers,
maybe a thunderstorm, the 345 o'clock.
Not a whole lot.
And again, we'll wait and see this updates.
5:00 o'clock.
Things start to get interesting.
Gotta sell there.
Got some strong sales developing here
and notice the time up there in the corner.
5 PM 6789.
Look at this line trying to move in.
That's pretty potent right there.
In fact,
that you've got some strong storms and
some rotation tracks in the Upstate
heading into western North Carolina.
Burke County, Cleveland County Area,
Rutherford County, Polk County.
Then by 910 eleven so got some strong storms,
but they're beginning to weaken.
They're still there, but the rotation.
Facts don't show much going on,
so that's why overnight I'm not overly
concerned we lose the heating of the day.
But then Friday morning,
look at the front starts heading in.
7-8 o'clock 9 starting
to get some heat there.
So some interesting things going on here.
That's a broken line,
but that's a pretty strong line.
Got some rotation tracks there
week one there one up there.
Nothing crazy.
Doesn't look anything like we saw on Monday,
but a couple of the watch,
but certainly some damaging winds possible.
And then we go into the afternoon.
The front starts to push east so those
strong storms start to crank back up.
That's why there's a medium risk to
areas heading off towards the east and
you can see boy by then this might wear.
This is this might be where things
get crazy in the afternoon as it
heads towards central North Carolina,
so again severe weather risk.
Probably 2 waves Thursday night and
again Friday morning into midday.
Also,
do not let your guard down for
flash flooding
in the mountains there is the medium risk
and again there's a look at the risk on
Friday with some low end and medium risk.
But behind all this this is the good news.
Memorial Day weekend.
Once this front moves through, folks.
You get that. So we just got to
get through tomorrow into Friday.
Of course, I will continuously post updates.
There's a good time to be
weather aware and please,
I don't often say this.
Tell people to follow me on Facebook
and Twitter with the previous
events we've been streaming long
before tornado warnings are issued,
giving you a heads up and we will
send notifications to your phone.
So the other thing I want you
to do is get the WCNC news app.
Grab this thing.
Right now we send out push notifications.
We stream right to it.
If you're not on Facebook.
Or YouTube or Roku app.
We will stream to this device on that app,
so grab that app will put out
a push notification saying,
hey, you're not a warning,
but Brad is tracking severe weather.
Here's a live stream you can watch
and just like the last three tornado
warnings we've been streaming,
talking about the weather long
before the warnings come out
trying to give you a heads up.
So tell your friends you know
just for weather safety,
they need to follow me on Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.
Follow us on WCNC.
Get that.
App right now I tell you it,
it can be a lifesaver and it can give
you a heads up that you're not going
to get from the typical warnings.
Don't always wait for your phone to go off.
Pay attention to what I'm
saying ahead of time.
I'll try to give you as
much heads up as possible.
Not perfect.
It's still the weather,
but I'm gonna try to give you as much
notice as possible that there's a
possibility something could happen,
so it's your more weather aware as
we get into these spring storms.