Another Good Chance For Impactful Storms | Weather For Weather Geeks 7/20/26

[00:00:10]Hey, good morning evening everyone. It is Eric here with the weather for Weather Geeks. It's the 20th day of July. We have another severe weather risk ahead of us after just getting done with severe weather in parts of the area on Saturday. So, we're going to recap Saturday real quickly before we get too far into this video and to talk about our next severe weather risk on Tuesday.

[00:00:28]Could be even a more impressive risk than we had on Saturday. The storm reports from our viewing area had a scattering of wind damage across the region Saturday late in the afternoon, early in the evening.

[00:00:40]Uh uh uh swath of wind damage in a few spots from uh the western part of Route 30 in Columbiana County all the way down towards Calcutta and East Liverpool. Perhaps the most significant damage in our area was in Mahoning County from Poland on south towards New Springfield and other places kind of in between. We might have had a a microburst or at the very least uh some pretty strong straight-line winds that rolled through a storm rolled through this area with a storm that gathered some momentum and and strength as it crossed from Youngstown on south and east into kind of the the bottom half or eastern third and bottom half of Mahoning County Saturday late afternoon and early evening. That was right around 6:00 p.m. in that specific location. But then we had a much nicer day on Sunday and today was a winner. Let's look at a time-lapse from Niles and you know, it's nice to see clear skies. Now, we had a little haze and wildfire smoke still up there in the atmosphere today, but not nearly uh as much as we had at the end of last week. The wildfire smoke issue is pretty much behind us at this point.

[00:01:41]And ever since yesterday, the dew points have been in the comfortable range. We had a great night for leaving the windows open last night. In fact, it was close to 50 at daybreak in parts of the area this morning. The dew point is in the mid-50s locally here in the 7:00 hour. Some higher dew points off to our west and then it gets really muggy a couple of states to our west and that more humid air is coming our way for tomorrow. So again, the air quality is what we call moderate. For most folks, it's no big deal.

[00:02:04]For those with underlying health concerns, perhaps the air quality was not super great today, but certainly again a big improvement over what we had at the end of last week. All right, let's talk about the next threats. This is a tricky forecast over the next 24 hours. We're going to stay quiet this evening, but we have a couple of things to watch to our north and west. Couple of tornado watches and severe thunderstorm watches.

[00:02:27]We have a band of showers up over parts of the mitten of Michigan or the thumb of Michigan, if you will.

[00:02:35]And it looks like this thing out here west of Chicago. This is what's going to miss us to the south overnight.

[00:02:42]We'll be more concerned about activity that blossoms up here, perhaps heading our way as we head into Tuesday morning.

[00:02:49]And you know, there's a plethora of model solutions at this point in terms of how things will go over the next 24 hours. Let's just look at tonight and first thing tomorrow morning. This is the high resolution rapid refresh model.

[00:03:01]It's a high resolution model that we get an update once an hour.

[00:03:05]Really valuable tool, but just like any other model, a lot of times it's wrong.

[00:03:09]It doesn't have the right idea, but we're going to show you what it has in mind for us over the next 12 hours with activity sprouting in parts of Wisconsin and Michigan overnight. And this is with our advancing warm front. Now, it looks like as we head towards tomorrow morning, a lot of this may be kind of dying off, but then there may be beyond 7:00 a.m., there may be fresh activity starting to brew closer to I-71. So that's beyond the scope of of this high resolution model, but we'll show you some other model ideas here momentarily for the rest of the daylight hours on Tuesday.

[00:03:42]Now, it is a level three risk of severe weather. Our severe weather scale one to five. If you're a a weather weenie, you're probably you know, fairly familiar with the Storm Prediction Center. Their products, their colors, their terminology, things like that. We take their products and change the colors a little bit and go with a one to five scale instead of terms like slight, enhanced, moderate, things like that. I think it's a little easier for folks to understand a one to five scale. And I think the color scheme is a little more intuitive for a lot of people.

[00:04:13]Some of the lower level severe weather risks on the in the SPC products, they're green. A lot of people just instinctively mean green is good. Green does not mean danger. A lot of times, you know, even a you know, a low-end severe weather risk, somebody gets hit by a bad storm. So, we we stay away from their colors in addition to their terminology and just go with a one to five scale. And in our area, our part of the country, a level three risk by SPC's terminology is an enhanced risk. This is something that we see on average one to three times per year.

[00:04:42]Some years zero or one time, some years more than three times. I think this is about the third time in most of our area we will be under a level three risk. And it may be the last time. Um climatologically speaking, as we get into the second half of summer, especially very late July and into August, severe weather risks tend to start, you know, tailing off pretty quickly as uh we get into the second half of summer. But, all options are on the table tomorrow in terms of risks.

[00:05:08]Damaging winds, of course. That's the number one concern. Any particularly storm Any particularly strong storm could have some hail, and the tornado risk is certainly not zero. It's somewhere between two and five percent or so in most of the region.

[00:05:21]It may be highest south and east of Youngstown, but we're not going to split hairs too much. It's one of those days that uh you know, there's enough wind energy in the atmosphere, which is a little unusual for again the second half of July and we're getting into the second half of summer. But, this is kind of an unseasonably strong storm system with enough wind energy, enough wind shear aloft um that uh you know, some turning storms will be a possibility.

[00:05:44]Now, here's a a look at a model beyond first thing tomorrow morning. Um so again, a dying line of showers could occur first thing in the morning. But it's interesting some of the model solutions here mid-morning. This is 9:45 10:00 in the morning.

[00:05:55]Um taken literally, this may be a pretty potent band of thunderstorms. Now, the last couple of runs of some of our other high-resolution rapidly updating modeling are suggesting that even before the morning is through, there could be a pretty potent line of thunderstorms pushing through. This is actually pretty close to our warm front. And even though this is climatologically speaking not a real favorable time of the day for severe weather, you think of severe weather being of the the ingredients being best mid to late afternoon, something like that. But tomorrow's set up a little bit different. We have a a warm front and there's lots of wind shear along this warm front, changing of the wind direction with height through the atmosphere.

[00:06:34]And the atmosphere will be quickly destabilizing tomorrow morning. Uh we're going to see those dew points those higher dew points rushing in.

[00:06:42]Um the air will have no trouble, you know, rising.

[00:06:45]And so we don't want to sleep on the idea that tomorrow morning could turn stormy even before noon. And so what happens tomorrow morning will then have a big impact on what happens the rest of the day. Here's a look at the same model mid-afternoon. Notice the coverage isn't that high, but it does have a few things trying to sprout back up.

[00:07:03]Will the atmosphere be worked over and contaminated um from the morning activity if we do have a a decent morning cluster pushing through? That's possible. And if it's contaminated enough, maybe there's not all that many storms around during the second half of the day. But again, taken literally, uh this model does have things starting to pop back up mid-afternoon.

[00:07:24]And then closer to our cold front as we get into the evening. Again, the coverage may be not that high, but any of these storms could be strong or severe, especially if we get some intervals of sunshine and the atmosphere gets a chance to recover as we go into the afternoon. So bottom line, this is a tough forecast tomorrow trying to time these things out. Uh a lot will depend on what happens in the morning as far as then what happens in the afternoon and early in the evening. So, stay tuned.

[00:07:47]You know, I'll have you covered on social media and on our newscast as well as Gavin and Andrew tomorrow morning. In the meantime, high confidence what happens the rest of the week. It's going to be a cool day on Wednesday. A little September preview on Wednesday.

[00:07:58]Temperatures may not get out of the 60s.

[00:08:01]No better than 70 or so Wednesday, but aside from a morning sprinkle or a shower, we should be dry Wednesday and certainly will be dry Thursday and Friday with high pressure building in more great sleeping weather at night.

[00:08:10]Open up those windows. We may be even cooler. What nights do we have the coolest nights? That's Wednesday night.

[00:08:17]It may be even cooler than last night. I could see where some places dropped to 46 or 47 degrees Wednesday night first thing Thursday morning. I think we're also done with 90-degree days in the month of July.

[00:08:26]Our 10-day forecast here takes us almost right through the end of the month and lots of 70s and 80s heading our way, but I don't see a return of 90-plus degree temperatures through the end of July.

[00:08:36]Not going to rule out 90s late in the summer and even into early fall.

[00:08:39]Sometimes we can have a 90-degree day into the first half of September.

[00:08:43]But at least in the foreseeable future in the next week to 10 days or so, it seems pretty unlikely that we are going to get that hot. So, yeah, complicated situation unfolding on Tuesday potentially stormy with strong to severe storms a possibility. So, make sure you have the Storm Tracker 21 app downloaded and the push alerts turned on. We'll keep you updated there all our usual venues and we'll do some live-streaming coverage as needed coming up on Tuesday.

[00:09:07]In the meantime, thanks for watching on this Monday evening. And have a great rest of your night.