Storm development requires three key atmospheric ingredients: moisture (measured as precipitable water), lift (a mechanism to force air upward), and wind shear (change in wind speed and direction with height). Even when moisture levels are high (1.5-2 inches of precipitable water), storms won't develop without sufficient lift, which is typically provided by weather fronts. The combination of high CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) and wind shear creates conditions favorable for severe thunderstorms, with higher values indicating greater potential for organized severe weather events.
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Beyond the Forecast | The Latest Updates on Possible Storms
Added:[music] Hey, welcome to Beyond the Forecast. And our our producer Michael uh who gets everything ready, he made sure that this camera was correct today [laughter] cuz we had that surprise yesterday. So, >> yeah. So, I guess the show before us, they were zoomed in on a guest mullet.
That's what had happened.
>> Okay.
>> So, you didn't have a mullet to show, unfortunately.
>> Oh, Brian, you're going to have to help me out a little bit.
>> I was Everyone's going to help me out a little bit. Yeah, we're going have to help me out. Yeah. Do a little shifting little shimmy. [laughter] >> All right. Uh, we have a chance to see some strong storms later today into the area. Here's a look at the satellite.
Uh, big regional view. You can see Bertha and the Gulf. You can see the clouds and thunderstorms that are trying to move closer to our area. There's some in Northern Virginia right now. So, a little bit of rainfall that we're expecting later today and maybe some strong storms, too.
>> If you can go back uh to the wider shot, look at that little wave of moisture, you know, north of Puerto Rico.
>> Oh, yep.
>> A little something. Not go not expected to develop into anything. The National Hurricane Center doesn't even have an area kind of, you know, general gauge of what's going to happen with that.
There's no 10% 20% or anything on that, but just a sign that >> while it's been a slow start to the season, there's still stuff out there.
Yeah. Like it's not completely void of thunderstorm development or anything like that. There's still waves of moisture >> passing on by. So, the tropics like it always does as we head into August into September, it eventually will start to uh get going. But yeah, we have Bertha and then for us, we have just thunderstorms that we're watching for the next couple days. I have a cousin of mine that's in Puerto Rico right now and all the flights were cancelled today because they they had bad weather. They couldn't get back out and now I look at the satellite like what is the weather?
It doesn't look exactly bad down there.
>> Oh darn. What are we going to do? Yeah, >> we're going to get stuck in Puerto Rico.
Oh darn.
>> I mean just general thunderstorms and seab breeze areas of rain. Not bad.
>> Doesn't look like anything crazy that they >> No.
>> Have to cancel the flight.
>> Well, where are they flying into?
>> I don't I don't know what the flight itinerary is. I don't They're going to They're going to Minnesota as well while they're trying.
>> Maybe I don't know. Maybe the storm's in on the way there. I don't know.
>> Yeah, maybe there's something. I mean, I don't know. Like Atlanta's fine.
Charlotte looks fine.
>> The Northeast.
>> I'm curious what their flight path would be. Well, Puerto Rico. They probably go Puerto Rico into the Northeast >> and then connecting to >> back to Minnesota. Maybe that's what it is. It's probably the Northeast because there's level three out of five risk for severe weather, enhanced risk through much of the Mid-Atlantic.
>> Yeah. Let me uh pop up Max. So yeah, you can see there's some storms out there.
>> Look at all the tornado warnings.
>> Yes, >> even into northern New Jersey.
>> Yes, there's a good amount of them. So, let me turn that mosaic.
>> Lot of lightning through central Virginia, too.
>> There we go. I wanted that. Um so, uh we have Yeah, there's some storms out there, but it's not I mean, New York is where the there's a bigger hub.
>> Wow.
>> So, maybe that's what happened.
>> Maybe they're concerned about that.
>> A lot of lightning through central Virginia right now with those storms.
Yes, there is. Yes, there is. So, let's get down into our region. So, these showers and storms that we have across north central Virginia looking pretty strong. This one near uh Richmond, the storm north of Richmond, pretty potent storm right there with that severe thunderstorm warning. There's two warnings on it. And they did indicate earlier that there was a tornado possible with that one severe thunderstorm warning. So, they're going to be watching that closely. National Weather Service winds could be gusting up to 70 mph with quarter size hail at that one.
>> Yeah, >> that's a pretty healthy looking storm right there. panic.
>> Yeah, it's moving northeast. So, it's going to graze by the uh the northern neck. The forward speed of it, I didn't see that. Let me look again here. It has a forward speed of 25 miles an hour is what it's doing right now. So, that would bring it into spots across the northern neck. Let me just reconfigure this because it's at the 30. And we'll slide that up into that direction. And there it is. Maybe Reedville 522.
>> Reedville is going to get rain kind of see to the south and west.
>> Yeah, there's already rain in the area.
So that might weaken it a bit.
>> It could. It definitely could. But Tabahanic will probably get in on some stronger thunderstorms. Um what is that?
Mango. Mangahick. How do I say that?
>> Sure.
>> Mangahick. That's how I would say it.
Valley Lee if it holds together.
>> Yeah, sure. Yeah.
>> Some strong storms near Beaver Dam.
Yeah, we that's my best guess. Uh north of Richmond right now, but look off towards Lynchburg. There's some more developments to the west.
>> This is part of that initial line. So now this is the big debate of what model is right.
for what's initializing.
>> The graph and the her have been it's pretty much flip a coin with those models. See which one's right cuz one's showing this one's showing the other.
>> So let's let's take a look here. So we'll load in the future radar and we'll let the product load and we'll let it start over. So it's paused and we'll turn the radar back on here temporarily.
So here's the radar imagery. This is right now. And then there's the model data. So I'm just going to turn it on and then turn it off.
>> All it's really missing is that stuff north of Richmond. bad.
>> Other than that, it's not doing too bad.
It's a little intense on the Eastern Shore stuff, but >> yeah, but it's not horrible.
>> And there's the in-house graph model.
So, there's >> that's struggling a bit.
>> It is. Now, it is >> big time.
>> Now, it is. So, bad model. Not going to use it.
>> We can we can throw that one out that that one out for now just because it's initializing really poorly.
>> Not going to use it. So, here's the HR.
We'll look at the next couple of hours here. Here's the next total of the next 6 hours, but here's 4:00. So, this is 1 hour from now. We're going into 5:00 close to Richmond. I think this is moving a little slow.
>> Little slow. Yeah, storms usually pick up the pace, especially with these past couple of events. I feel like you you see storms through central Virginia. Oh, they're, you know, 20 to 30 mph movement and then as soon as they hit 95, >> they get inspired by the fast drivers and they're like, "Oh, it's off to the races. Let's increase our speed. Let's move into Hampton Roads at, you know, speeds of 40 to 50." Yep. So, there's 5:30 now going into around 6:30. We're getting I'm going to zoom this in a little bit so we can kind of see some other locations. We're getting close to Williamsburg and Gloucester at around 6 to 6:30.
>> I think that >> that's 3 hours from now.
>> The light I think the light rain or that you know the light greens on this probably won't be areas of rain. Um it would probably be >> What is it using here? Is it using It's using light green. Yeah, >> it's using composite reflectivity. Let me change it to base.
It backs off a little bit. That looks a little more >> Yeah, I gotta change I'll change that favorite to show bass because I don't really like showing composite that much.
Uh, for those of you that don't understand, composite is the whole column, the whole thunderstorm, and it's squished down so it makes it look more intense.
>> That's why bass is a little bit more better.
>> Yeah, >> I learned that in college. I got teased.
>> Really?
>> Yeah. Because I said, "Oh, I like showing composite because it looks cooler." Well, it's not an accurate representation >> because you can have you you know you can have rain maybe out ahead of the the leading line loft, but it's not really making it to the ground just yet.
There's a lot of situations where it could be kind of misleading.
>> Yep. And then it it the overshooting top makes it look really intense. Things like that.
>> The overshooting top could be, you know, that what that light green is if it's really intense. So, >> Right. totally. So, we have >> that anvil kind of shape.
>> Yeah. the uh the thunderstorms moving in sometime this evening, but this doesn't really have them impacting spots into the southside and northeast North Carolina at least now through nine o'clock. If we extend this out and uh it's just loading right here. So, we'll we'll bring it back a little bit. So, if we extend this out farther into the future, you can see a whole another round that moves across Northern Virginia that looks like heavy rainfall, maybe severe, maybe not. We'll have to kind of wait and see on that. But that does bring some thunderstorms moving into the middle peninsula, Eastern Shore at around 1 to two o'clock uh as we go into the overnight hours and then eventually Hampton Road Cities 3 4 a.m.
But this kind of doesn't bring it into the Hampton Road Cities either.
>> There's a ghost in here. Where's Ashley?
What's going on? Where's Ashley with [laughter] ghost hair? This I don't know if you can tell if you can zoom in somewhere.
>> This right here popped up twice >> randomly. He didn't randomly. I didn't touch it.
>> Just randomly. Where's Ashley with ghost tails? We need to get some information.
>> It [laughter] just went It just went >> It just popped up on its own. Yeah, >> but I haven't touched it. It just did it twice. Sorry. We got really distracted.
>> Brian's a little distracted. All right, we're just going to leave that.
>> I got scared. Whoa.
>> Yeah. All right. We're going to take a little break here. We'll be back in just a bit.
up.
Come on.
up. Up.
help.
Hey Welcome back to Beyond the Forecast.
Everything is good now on the desk. So, it popped up. It just did it again.
There's a ghost in here.
>> You're just going to have to leave it up and make the ghost happy.
>> Yep. I think that's what you're going to have to do.
>> That's going to make a loud noise when that pops up.
>> Yeah.
All right, >> everybody will know when it flips up again.
>> Severe thunderstorm watch until 10:00.
So 1000 p.m. all of Virginia uh in this not into northeast North Carolina. Uh so you're looking a little bit better off across northeast North Carolina, but this is a Virginia type of event.
>> I think I think tonight it's really Hampton Roads south is that cut off.
>> Yeah, I think it's mainly across the peninsula's eastern shore for that better chance for the severe weather.
>> This isn't the first >> Oh, there it goes. Oh wow. I didn't think that was actually going to happen.
>> This is a full water bottle, too.
>> Crazy.
>> Good thing that was sealed.
>> Ouch.
>> Otherwise, yeah, you'd be going to the principal's office. [laughter] So, >> um we're going to we're going to need to get Ashley in here with Ghost Tails. Um uh the past couple of events, this has been kind of common. I feel like Hampton Roads North getting all the storms south. It's kind of just cut off.
>> Feel like with these kind of stalling fronts this time, >> yesterday they missed out. Peninsulas missed out. We had some stuff just remembering like there's been a couple times since like >> this month and then even if I think back to June where like >> I think in the last couple years there's been more severe weather in like New Jersey and Maryland than there has been here >> of recent Oh yeah, >> which doesn't seem normal, right?
>> Which by the way there's three active warnings in a like pretty much in a line for tornado warnings in northern New Jersey right now. Like just a place that you don't usually see that, >> right, >> is is seeing a bunch and we have really been lucky. Knock on wood, we've been lucky.
>> Yeah. We'll check it out especially.
>> We'll check it out in a second. I just wanted to go through future track going into tomorrow because here's the rainfall for tonight. This is our in-house graph model that we aren't liking as much >> because this line comes in a lot later than HR. So, we're thinking this is closer to maybe 6 or 7 it comes in instead of 9:30. So, we're going to have to watch that closely. But the one trend that'll likely happen is that there's a lot of rain that'll continue to fall overnight tomorrow morning. Tomorrow during the day, there'll be rounds of heavy rain and into the afternoon and evening, it doesn't really stop raining.
There'll be breaks, but there's going to be chances for rain at any time during the day tomorrow.
>> Yeah, this is a stalling a stalling cold front this time of year. It's very typical that this happens, but the front's basically going to be sitting right over top of us allowing for, you know, rounds of rainfall. This is not moisture from Bertha. This is just a stalling front >> that has a you know there's the P watts I think are up to around two precipitable precipitable water. So that's a lot of rainfall in our atmosphere. Yeah, it's going to be it's going to be heavy. Look at this next seven days and most of this >> going uh what through Friday maybe Friday starts to wrap up. But we could see you know maybe four to what seven inches of rain in some areas as we go through the next couple of days. That's going to be rather isolated. It's not going to be, you know, these yellow colors are not going to be for everyone.
Um, >> but we see a lot of those heavy downpours. Yeah.
>> Yeah. The standout spots will probably be around 6 in of rain, which will be insane. This is like this is kind of like a almost a drought buster event for some areas.
>> I think it definitely will be, but also have to look out for flooding for sure over the next couple of days if we're going to continue to see those rounds of heavy downpours.
>> Um, that's going to be, I think, a really big threat for us. But at least on the positive, that should hopefully put a nice dent, if not end, to the drought >> for some. Yeah.
>> Yeah. For some.
>> I think obviously the Yeah. The the areas that maybe >> get over the next what, three to four days, the areas that maybe only get by with around an inch of rain where it's like, oh, we've missed every single big downpour with this event. You're not going to be out of the drought, right?
>> Like that's going to happen. That's just the nature of these summertime events.
But >> there will be some of us that score with uh when it comes to rain. And I know a lot of people I've been every single time I feel like I post something weather related on Facebook, someone's like, "Can we please just get some rain in here?"
>> Yeah.
>> Like that's been a consistent comment like it's been a dry year.
>> Well, with this front over us, it could be an issue. So, when we look at how much moisture there is in the atmosphere, we can look at the moisture levels and this is precipitable water right here. So, it's titled moisture levels, but it's Pwatts.
>> Essentially, take the entire column of air and just squeeze all the moisture that's available out of it. And that's your Pwatts. and a column of air from the ground to the top of the atmosphere.
Yes. And you squeeze all that down. So, uh, higher risk for flash flooding is when you have pew watts that are about 1.5 to 1.7 or so. Uh, definitely 2 in. And that's basically what we're seeing in all the green areas on here. This is I believe the cont I'm trying to match it from Storm Prediction Center. It looks like it's around one and a half. One and a half is where it goes from green to brown.
>> Okay. So that's what we're using for the contours and it stays high into tonight into tomorrow as well. The humidity and the moisture in the atmosphere stays elevated at least for the next 24 hours.
So that's where the concern for flooding could occur and flash flooding because we have a lot of water in the atmosphere.
>> And for those who are maybe confused, you know, if you go back to what it is the time stamp right now, you see a lot of green over us and you're probably wondering, well, why isn't it raining right now? You need a couple a bunch of different things to happen simultaneously for storms to develop.
The thing that we're lacking right now is lift. We don't have anything for to lift the atmosphere to lift the air and to, you know, create those clouds and those clusters of storms together. So, um, we're missing a key ingredient. You really need lift.
>> Well, you're right, but you're I think you're I think a few people might get confused by that. We have the availability for lift. We don't have something to create the lift.
>> We don't have a front.
>> We don't have that. We don't have the mechanism. Yeah. We don't have the mechanism.
>> We have plenty. Oh, yeah. We have plenty of heat.
>> Yeah, because here's I forgot that he can do this on >> a seabbze isn't going.
>> Get this up. How do I get this? Okay, here we go. Uh, bam. All right. Here's the I forgot that he can do the models on SPC. I haven't used this in a long time.
>> Take out your notebook, ladies and gentlemen.
>> Yeah. So, uh, >> I don't know if I maybe I shouldn't have brought this up because now we have to explain it. So, >> classes in session. [laughter] >> This is complicated. But um but the one thing I the reason I actually brought this up is because I wanted to show how humid the atmosphere is. So the green line and the red line, they're almost next to each other the whole column.
>> It's a very saturated column of air.
>> Yeah. There's not an area where the green goes to the left on the graphic and it deviates. Yeah.
>> That much.
>> That's why I wanted to show this. Um there's a lot of other things that we could take away from this too because that's what you learn in in synoptic meteorology, but we're not going to dive into everything right now. But we have an atmosphere that has a lot of moisture in it. And that's kind of the takeaway here. Now the the background graphic and if I can get this thing to go away. I got it went away on its own and now it didn't doesn't. But the background is the amount of cape energy. So that's where we have >> like 3,000 >> the potential for like we were talking about earlier lift. We just don't have that front around to really get these storms going.
>> Right. Yeah. So that's where we are with the amount of available energy in the atmosphere. In terms of wind shear, there's a lot up north.
>> Lot up north. That's why they're seeing the stronger thunderstorms and multiple tornado warnings up north, too. There's just tons of wind shear out there.
>> It increases as we go into the evening.
So that's where the concern for severe weather is >> for for us to areas to the north. Yeah, you can a little bit.
>> Yeah, we're pulling 40 knots. And we have the cape plus the shear. And remember that kind of tilts the thunderstorms, you know, as they go up so that it separates the downdrafts and the updrafts. It just helps storms become a little bit more >> organized, >> long sustained and organized. Yeah.
>> Yep. Uh the Craven Brooks is high, too.
We're pulling 30 plus on that already, and that usually isn't this high.
>> We're throwing a lot of terms out there, but this is a lot of stuff we look at for forecasting.
>> Hey, we're going beyond the forecast.
>> That is true. [laughter] >> I mean, that's what the show is all about. So, >> we did say get your notebooks out. There will be a test tomorrow. Um, you know, we're not going to get into the equation, but the equation Oh, it doesn't Hang on. Go over here.
>> There's the equation right there. So, yeah, if you really want to geek out, that's the equation for Craven Brooks right there. Cape times shear essentially. Um, you can learn all this.
You just hit the question marks on SPC's page and you can read more about what these parameters are. So, it's a good thing to uh to read up on. But one I one thing I did want to look at is the hicity and it's not as high, right? So it's a wind event maybe more so straight line wind event than a tornado event as it looks right now.
>> There's a lot of there's a lot of increasing wind with height but not of a lot of increasing wind and direction with height.
>> It looks like the model the wrap increases that and gives us a bullseye 200 over us. So uh don't take 200 as like it's going to happen. It doesn't mean that. It just means that okay there's actually something available now twist. Yeah, that makes sense why they have us in a if we have different colors of categories of what you could see for a tornado threat and we're on the lower end of that. So that's probably where they put us in on that.
>> Let me pull it up here. This is a weatherfront. I where I can get it the fastest. So we have the categoral right there, level two tornado. That's what you're talking about right there.
>> Talking about >> Yep. So there's a tornado at 5%. I'm sure the storm prediction center was probably looking at the environment and some of the models and they were thinking, okay, well, if storms are able to get going into northeast North Carolina, >> then they have all the ingredients to work with for to become strong or severe. [clears throat] This is >> and that's the wind.
>> This is the wind. This is high. That's pretty high for areas north. So, >> that's very high.
>> And like you were saying, you were looking at before, there's a lot of increase in the wind speed with height uh for areas north. So that kind of hints at if you know get those heavy downpours to kind of bring down that wind aloft like you could be looking at maybe down trees, some power lines with some of those stronger storms, >> right?
>> Um yes, this it'll be interesting to see what happens for the next several hours.
>> Yeah. So all the storms are up to the north right now. We're going to sneak in a little break here and then we'll do a quick uh radar tour and an updated look at future track in just a bit.
up yes.
[screaming] up.
Hey Yes, up.
Welcome back to Beyond the Forecast. So, we're watching a few things on Super Doppler 10 right now. We have a couple of thunderstorms that are still sitting north of Richmond right now. A lot of activity. And as I'm kind of looking at it, it's kind of starting to get a little bit more ragged here in this sector right here.
>> So, this thing is it's going to be a big I can see there's a flash flood warning out, too. This is going to be a big rain event for Richmond. But, in terms of the chances for severe weather in Richmond here in the next few minutes, I don't really see it being a big concern.
>> Well, the thing is there's a couple of those cells that are kind of forming just to the south and east of that main line. So I think that could be cutting off >> some of the energy getting into those storms. So that's probably why it's looking a little bit more raggy. You kind of tell over the last what 5 10 minutes 15 minutes the lightning activity as that has progressed.
>> Here's just 15 minutes. So >> like the lightning is just not as much as it was like an hour ago. So >> yeah, >> um >> it's just kind of a sign that it's >> maybe breaking down a tiny bit.
>> Yeah, it has decreased a little bit.
Let's pull up the lightning counter.
There's 162 on the whole screen. So, it seems like a lot, but the area that we're kind of watching is more so here.
And then we're at 76 for a pretty large area. So, it's not too much. It's kind of normal. Just garden variety thunderstorms. These ones off to the west, we're going to have to watch cuz these are tapping into a little bit more uh fresh air. So, these ones, I'll just assume that they're moving at that forward speed at around 25 miles an hour. That's still 8 9:00 for Williamsburg. Yeah.
>> So, they have a long ways to go before they move in. Although what what a lot of times happens get around I95 and then they increase a tiny bit in speed. So that could be a little bit earlier, but yeah, it's going to be this evening for us.
>> Yep, it could it could change. That speed definitely will change. So we'll be watching for that. Uh we have about 2 minutes left. So let's take a look at the feature track here. And uh actually I'm not going to look at this one cuz I'm not a big fan of that one. Let's go back to the radar. Yeah.
>> Yeah, I don't want to use that. So I want to go back to HR. Let me just manually set this up. So, here's the current radar and here's a future radar.
And we'll do the next 12 hours. So, let me manually bring it back to the beginning. And it is Oh, I got to change one more thing. Give me one moment. Bam.
Base reflectivity. It's loading in right now. And here we go. So, we have a couple of showers and storms. It's not doing a great job with that rainfall north of Richmond right now.
>> It's missing out on that.
>> Not doing the best. Um, but it's doing better than than what the graph was sh saying. So, >> yes. So, this has some rain moving into the northern neck here in the next two hours. We have some showers and storms moving in close to the peninsula at around 6 7:00 or so. Same thing for the Eastern Shore and maybe some stronger storms, too. So, we're going to have to watch for that. Uh, some rainfall hitting the rest of the peninsula and Eastern Shore. 8:39. Maybe the Southside, but it might stay north.
We'll have to kind of watch, wait, and see what happens with that.
>> Yeah.
>> Yep.
And then into the overnight hours, more rainfall is going to be likely as we see some showers and storms developing to the north and trying to slide south.
>> Yeah, tomorrow's going to be a bit of a mess at times. So, >> big rain tomorrow.
>> Get ready for that. Yeah, >> big rain tomorrow. So, a lot of rain on the way. We're going to keep a close eye on everything. Thanks for watching this episode of Beyond the Forecast. We'll be back here again tomorrow and we'll see you at 4 o'clock.
>> [music] [music]
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