Noon Update

Well, I decided to cut the 2-month hiatus short seeing as how the weather is being a bit more active in the region than I had expected earlier in the week. Frontal boundary stalled out over the Great Lakes region this afternoon will continue to remain stationary through today. As it remains stationary, waves of low pressure will ride along it, this prompting storms around and near the vicinity of the front. All of this being the result of a much broader system that is effecting the region as a whole today and tomorrow. Down in the south, a large area of high pressure is remaining virtually stationary – barely sliding off to the west – and that is keeping an upper level low pressure over in the Pacific Northwest in one spot. The upper level flow runs from the southwest to the northeast from the Plains and into the Great Lakes region. The location of this flow has not shifted a bit. Waves of low pressure riding out from the Plains are easily identifiable on the charts and continue to move northeast towards the Great Lakes region, prompting clusters of showers and thunderstorms to develop. Upper level ridge located over the southern states today is allowing for warm air to be brought up from the south. Temperatures will continue to increase across the Great Lakes region today as that warm air continues to filter in south of the stationary front. The air in the region is remaining rather unstable this morning and afternoon as just about all conditions minus a few “necessary ones” are present. While areas around Detroit will be seeing storms fire up throughout the day today, the other places in the region are going to have a bit of a different story in the region. The storms that develop will move close to the Fort Wayne metro area to the northwest this afternoon and evening; however I am expecting that the bulk of them will remain out of the region until late this evening. The front will begin to slide slowly southward starting late tonight and this is going to allow those storms to begin firing up in the Fort Wayne area and possibly the Toledo area as early as midnight. This all may seem a bit on the confusing side for those of you who aren’t familiar with the present weather pattern in the area. The storms that do develop in the western half of the region will more than likely be a scattered event, not so much an MCS or clustered major storm event. Conditions in the region are keeping these storms from being too strong in the region. Tomorrow as the system begins to head further south in the region as a whole, expect widespread storms to develop and move through the region – mainly in the afternoon for most, but still at any point tomorrow (I’ll type more about that later). There will be on factor that will prevent our thunderstorms from becoming too strong in the region and that will be the cloud cover. In fact, if the clouds become too much than perhaps we won’t pick up any storms in the region tomorrow. I’ll type more about that in a little bit. For now, that’s the weather!