Last-Minute Model Data Just Took A SERIOUS Turn

[00:00:00]Welcome in friends. I hope you had a nice weekend. So glad you stopped by today. It is Monday, July the 20th, and we are slightly less than 1 million subscribers away from 1 million subscribers. But we've got a big push going on to the end of the year. Anyway, I'm Jason, meteorologist for the channel, blah blah blah blah blah. We've got to talk tropics. We've got a situation brewing right here in the Gulf. Tropical depression number two is going to become tropical storm Bertha in all likelihood later this afternoon or overnight tonight. Tropical storm watches are already up. The models have made some adjustments with their forecast of this system and we're going to take a look at those and the National Hurricane Center has actually adjusted the track as well. So, we're going to look at all of that, what's driving this thing and how strong it might get, including a worst case scenario wind map if things came together just right in terms of wind gust. We'll show you how much precipitation is likely to fall, what's driving that, too. So, a lot to get into. We're going to start right here with the infrared loop. And if there's anything I can be in prayer about, by the way, please let me know down in the comments section. Certainly subscribe if you like what you're seeing, if this is helpful to you at all. Would love to have you be part of the channel here, and let me know where you're watching from. We're looking at the infrared satellite loop, and this tells you a lot of stuff. It tells you where the convection is firing. That is thunderstorm activity. It also shows you if there's any winds and uh where the winds might be blowing in the upper levels because you can see the thunderstorm tops kind of blowing off in that direction. And we do have some shear out here. What's not present on this image is dry air. And you're asking me, well, what what are we looking at?

[00:01:30]Where is the system? Actually, a lot of bright colors out here. Well, I know where the system is because I've already looked and you can see it kind of rotating here. It's right up here just south really of Panama City, Pensacola, somewhere in that area. But the lowle circulation is here. It's moving very very very slowly up to the northwest.

[00:01:49]It's caught between two ridge of ridges of high pressure. We'll look at that here in just a minute when we look at steering. But that's where it is. And all the convection is really not firing around the center. It's off over here off the coast of Florida back out here into the Gulf. And so we don't have a good organized system on our hands. But we do have a low-level circulation now.

[00:02:09]And it's likely that will continue to gradually increase. One of the things you can't see here, but you can see here, this is our vapor loop. Shows you those uh high moisture content in the mid levels by the greens, but it also shows you where the dry air is by the yellows. And look at this. We've got some dry air that is penetrated into the system. It continues to plague the system, and that's why we don't see a big wrapped up bunch of convection around the core. That's one reason. We also have some shear kind of coming off in this direction as well. And as long as that moderate shear is in place, that's keeping the system from being able to organize. The Gulf waters are very, very warm and that will continue to provide fuel. But the shear is going to kind of relax, wax, and Wayne over the next 24 to 48 hours. After that, it's going to pick up. We've looked at that. I speculated yesterday we might actually see this thing stay a little bit south. But the National Hurricane Center's actually ticked the track slightly north. It is meandering. It's going to become a tropical storm later and come in here somewhere around Nollins and head on to the east of or the west of there and then maybe come into Texas in and around the Galveastston area as either a weak tropical storm or a tropical depression.

[00:03:18]By the way, if you're not in the Gulf and you're around other areas of the country, we've got a level three risk of severe weather where tornadoes, large hail, and very strong winds are possible today that's going to move east into the northeast tomorrow. And we've got some bad air out there and some heat that's plaguing much of the country. You can see some of those heat advisories already up here for parts of the mid Mississippi Valley or and lower Mississippi Valley over into the southern plains too and even the southeast. We're going to look at all of that in the video today. But here's where we have tropical storm watches up already from essentially just south of south of Cedar Key through Panama City over to Pensacola, Mobile, Alabama, and it stops the Alabama Mississippi line.

[00:03:56]There your tropical storm watches. These are going to be expanded likely into these areas later and some of these watches are going to be converted to warnings as we go through the day. We'll watch that occur. Special marine warnings and storm warnings up out here in the Gulf. Going to be very, very choppy out here as this thing begins to get together. Now, this is a uh depiction of the GFS over the last 48 hours or so. It's the last eight runs.

[00:04:23]And remember yesterday I told you the GFS didn't have a clue and it's finally getting a clue. At the beginning you can see it has nothing and now it's got a low-end tropical storm. So it's coming around. I'm showing you that to say that's the last hold out model. Now we have all models on board with a tropical storm developing out here. And yesterday a lot of these were not even in the green. These are the hurricane models intensity. And you can see in the green this is tropical storm strength from here to here. We start to get into category one hurricane strength in the yellow. Only one model is showing a hurricane. So, it's very unlikely that we get to that strength. Some more models were showing that potential yesterday, but given the latest guidance, we're seeing a little bit less of a chance of that. But, we are seeing a very high chance of a weak to moderate tropical storm and that can still be quite rough if you are under the influence of that. The hurricane latest hurricane models have this just south of Panama City tracking right into the southern coast of Louisiana staying just offshore until we get into and around New Orleans and the Delta region and then it continues west into Texas. The latest European ensemble guidance from overnight still really has a uh sort of a mean of about a thousand millibars when it makes landfall. So a very kind of a weak tropical storm. Several members continue to keep this to the south, feeling the influence of mid-level ridging. And if that were to occur, we would actually see potential for stronger conditions, maybe a higherend tropical storm or low-end hurricane. But this is becoming more and more unlikely. It looks like the taller the cloud tops are, the more they can be influenced by mid-level flow. When you have a very disorganized system, it's more, you know, it's more it prone to be affected by the lower level flow. And that's what we're seeing. That's why it's getting a little farther to the north. If it develops quickly, it may have more influence to keep south and feel some of that wind shear. All right, that's what's going on here. Here is the Google um ensemble suite. And you can see most of these here's your scale up here. 30 to 40 knots. 40 to 50 knots is in the green. Blue is 30 to 40 knots.

[00:06:32]You can see most of these are blues and greens. The ones that keep it a little farther south give it a little bit more of an opportunity to uh strengthen up, but most guidance is bringing this far enough to the north to have enough land interaction to keep us from getting into a hurricane and having a hurricane hit and around the Galveastston area. So, probably looking at a moderate lowend moderate to weak tropical storm. A lowend weak to moderate tropical storm would be a better way to say that actually. This is one of our hurricane models. It's the Hwarf. All right. So this shows where the system is right now at 1,000 to6 millibars. If we run this along through the afternoon today, by the time we get into the evening hours and overnight tonight, we're starting to see this thing strengthen. So it's now dropped at 998. Got some more contours and the convection seems to be wrapping around. So this is wanting to bring this to the north, bring it down to about 992 millibars or so, and then weaken it again as it makes landfall somewhere in the Florida panhandle. So, this is continuing on that northwest trajectory and landfall would be sometime overnight Tuesday night. According to this particular hurricane model, here's another hurricane model that keeps it a little bit farther to the west. This is Hmon. And again, it strengthens it pretty rapidly getting tropical storm strength by this afternoon into the overnight hours tonight. And as we wake up Tuesday morning, it's still well south of the panhandle of Florida.

[00:07:50]There's Mobile, there's Gulfport over here heading in toward Louisiana. And this thing goes down to 980 millibars or so. So fairly formidable tropical storm making landfall just along the southern coast of Louisiana. But that land interaction interrupts the circulation enough to keep it weak and then it comes back into Galveastston as a weakening tropical depression. So a couple of different models runs there showing you the hurricane models and what they're showing. The expectation is that it interacts with Louisiana. That's the biggest um or the highest probability at this point in time. Going to show you rainfall totals, what's steering this thing and where it's likely to go in terms of wind and all of that coming up next.

[00:08:35]All right, we've already looked at dry air. We've already established that the Gulf is very, very warm providing fuel.

[00:08:41]We're looking at wind shear now. And we're looking at shear kind of from the top of the column all the way down to essentially the bottom of the column and see where the brightest colors are. That is where the highest wind shear values are. Reds highest whites obviously we have very little wind shear in those areas there. Here is our system this morning. All right. So it's right here off the coast of Florida just south of there moving slightly to the northwest.

[00:09:07]And you can see it is being affected or impacted. We saw dry air before. also wind shear and uh remember in our tropical cyclone knowledge base at the top of the atmosphere we want evacuation of air. So we want a high pressure system sitting here over top of the hurricane or tropical cyclone if we want to see it strengthening. It evacuates the air here. Air has to come up from underneath and you get that spin, that stretching of the column. It just tightens the spin. You get faster and faster wind speeds. Well, we do not have that in place. Thankfully, this time we have wind shear instead throughout the column. And as we head through the next several hours into the afternoon, you don't see any improvement in that. In fact, you see a continued increase in shear as we get into Tuesday and Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday. And then the European ensemble mean wants to really continue to increase the shear along the track of that storm and kind of just behind it and near it enough to disrupt the circulation. So, that is not good news if you're hoping for tropical cyclone development. I'm not sure anybody's really hoping for that, but if you are, that's not great. We've got an upper level low out here that's helping to provide the wind shear. But, we've got two ridge centers. One over here in the Atlantic. We've been looking at this for a couple of days kind of nosing in and it's steering the system. Flow around this is kind of steering from the north here in the low levels, steering from the south to the north. And then we've got another ridge of high pressure out here in four corners area. And that is building in in this direction. and flow around that is wanting to go in this direction. And as we head out through the next couple of days, you get that clockwise flow. As that ridge builds in, it sort of traps the system underneath it and begins to send it back to the west. You can see that happening here. You see how it this sort of noses in and we get that clockwise flow. It wants to send it back around to the west. If it were a little bit stronger and those thunderstorm tops were going up a little bit taller into the atmosphere, it would probably fill this a little bit more strongly and keep it maybe south. But uh in any event, that's what's going to happen. This ridge is going to propel this back to the west and keep a lot of that moisture from going up into the eastern United States.

[00:11:10]Otherwise, we'd have some tropical moisture to help with help focus uh help this trough focus all of that and begin to bring a lot more rain. But there's going to be plenty of rain that falls over the next 5 days or so in parts of these areas anyway. So, we don't need additional tropical moisture going into the pattern. Over the next several days, the next 5 days actually, we're looking at the official prediction for rainfall.

[00:11:29]And you can see the big sharp cut off right here from Lafayette to New Orleans back over to Mobile, Crest View, Tallahassee, we're really looking at a very sharp cut off about a half an inch here. Down to New Orleans, you're looking at about an inch and a half. And then when you start to get into these purples, we're talking about 2 in. And into the oranges, it goes up quickly, 4 in or so. And then the yellows out here where nobody lives, we're talking 10 to 15 in. That's our scale. And you can see not very much difference in uh distance gets you, you know, 20 miles gets you from takes you from a half an inch and a half to maybe four or five, six inches.

[00:12:06]So if this thing tracks a little bit farther to the north, we're looking at bringing that heavy precipitation back to the north along the coastline and getting slightly in maybe Lafayette, New Orleans, you start to get pounded with some very heavy rain, some flooding down here. So we got to watch that in terms of the track over the next couple of days. Wind could be a problem, too. If we see strengthening and that dry air gets out of the core fast enough before the shear kind of takes over. Watching the wind over the next couple of days.

[00:12:31]You can kind of see the center of circulation out here spinning north of Pan or south of Panama City. As we head in through tomorrow morning, we're looking at that wind getting here and approaching parts of the southern coast of Florida, gusting into the 30s, 20s and 30s. Gulfport, you're looking at 18 miles per hour. And that continues to increase as we head through the afternoon tomorrow. And then get into the overnight hours, we're seeing gusts into the 30s routinely in these areas.

[00:12:56]And we could see start to see some gusts into the 40s and 50s, even 60s as this thing approaches the Delta region by the time we get into 11:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m.

[00:13:07]on Wednesday. But this is sort of a worst case scenario. This is one of our short-range models, and they want to spin these things up pretty quickly. If everything came together, this just right. This is kind of winds that you could maybe expect down here. 40 to 50 mile per hour wind gusts. It's a gust map, by the way. However, the likeliest prob the highest probabilities keep this lower than what we're seeing here. And so maybe gusts into the 20s and 30s would be much more likely at this point in time. But uh we don't want to take our eye off the ball. Things can change quickly in the tropical world. We know that. And our tropical cyclone knowledge base tells us many, many things. is one of those things is to not get too far out over our skis when it comes to taking the model guidance at face value 48 hours out. So, we'll have to watch all of this and how that plays out. Tune back in. I will continue to keep you updated here and have another update on this if anything changes this afternoon or evening and definitely another update in the morning. Now, we're going to turn our attention to smoke, air quality, heat waves, and severe weather that's going to be a problem over the next 48 hours. Here's a map we're all used to seeing. It's the surface map. It shows us frontal boundaries and highs and lows. And this particular version of the surface map has a lot of H's and L's on there. You can ignore most of those.

[00:14:17]I'll tell you what's important. What's important is this frontal boundary sagging here in the upper southeast back into the Midwest. And this low pressure will strengthen. We've got a lot of wind energy coming in today that is going to fuel a thunderstorm outbreak later today over across across parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes areas back into the cornbt. And severe weather is not out of the question. Parts of North Carolina too where we've got very very moist air mass. Don't have a lot of mid-level flow here, but certainly we do have an opportunity for severe weather. Trough extending back into our depression down here south of Pensacola, Panama City in there. Flooding risk continues out in the desert southwest. The monsunal flow providing showers, thunderstorms out here. People ask me all the time, what are these different boundaries on the map? Well, this one where you've got triangles going in to the south and uh little bubbles going back to the north.

[00:15:03]That is a stationary front. Means it's not really moving all that much. And you can see that kind of sitting here across the southeast. This is a warm front of course with the little bubbles on it.

[00:15:12]Looks red. And then the cold front coming in behind that with the triangles meaning air is moving to the east from the west or from the northwest southeast in this direction. But thunderstorms are possible anywhere you see shower the green hatched area. And by the way, thank you to all of our channel members, Tim and Renee, continuing to make contributions to the channel. Really appreciate that. Both of those are channel members. If you'd like to become a member, too. You four different levels to choose from. It's a good way to support us. Thank you to everyone that supports us. Could not do this without you. Certainly appreciate that. Air quality is a problem today, my friends, up here across the Midwest, particularly got unhealthy to very unhealthy conditions due to wildfire smoke coming in out of Canada. Moderate, where you see the yellow and uh green is fine.

[00:15:57]It's healthy, but uh there are sensitive groups that could still feel some particullet in the atmosphere. various air quality issues around Denver, LA, and then back up here in the Pacific Northwest, we have wildfire smoke up here from American fires. So, we've got fires all over the place. It's been very dry in a lot of these areas, and certainly wind is blowing and help to helping to exacerbate fire issues that we're having. Air quality is in and gray air quality issues, but we've got plenty of heat advisories up here in the Pacific Northwest and uh over into parts of the inter Mountain West and Great Basin region and back into the Midwest.

[00:16:30]We see a ton of heat advisories, even extreme heat warnings. We're going to see heat index values routinely in all of these areas go up to 105, maybe even 115 where we've got extreme heat warnings. All right, got a lot of corn out here. Some corn sweat up in the cornbt. Even some heat advisories down here, parts of eastern North Carolina, northern and eastern South Carolina, and Florida down around Miami. It's going to be very, very hot for much of the nation. Big story today is going to be severe weather up here in the Midwest.

[00:16:56]We looked at that on the last map, but we've got a level three out of five enhanced risk where you see the orange essentially most of Wisconsin except for the north western tip part of the up of Michigan around Marquette back west and then down here into much of eastern Iowa from maybe Ames over in toward uh uh De Moine, Waterlue, Cedar Rapids, places like that. So looking at coming in here, Chicago, Sous City, uh Rochester, Duth, you guys all up here, Cadillac, all up here in slight risk area. And then from uh looks like a Winston Salem down toward Fagatville back over to Elizabeth City and uh Newburn, Raleigh, Durham, slight risk of severe weather today. And we could see wind mostly in this area, but up here we've got a tornado threat, and I'll show you that. There's your tornado threat. potentially a strong tornado or two. EF2 or three tornadoes not out of the question where you see the hatched areas. Got some backing of the winds and going to see very a lot of spin in the low levels. So definitely look for that 5% chance of tornadoes within 25 milesi of a point. Wind is going to be a bigger threat with any of these uh storms that come through. We've got vigorous mid-level uh sort of a mid-level jet coming in with very strong winds and it's going to help to create an environment for a lot of shear. A lot of instability is going to be building here through the day as well. Wind down in North Carolina potentially as well.

[00:18:17]Hail could be a problem over 2 ines in diameter. And then tomorrow that risk shifts way over here into the eastern Ohio Valley. Parts of the interior northeast mid-Atlantic anywhere in the yellow could be from, you know, essentially uh Toronto, Canada down toward Indianapolis back into northern Tennessee. um getting over toward Nashville and northern North Carolina, north of Raleigh, Durham probably picking up in Greensboro and Boone and anywhere in Virginia over toward New York City looking at a potential Albany looking at a potential of severe weather. But our biggest threats from State College back through Columbus and then over into northeastern Kentucky, Charleston, West Virginia, and in toward the DC area tomorrow. So that is the severe weather threat of the next couple of days. You can actually see the mid-level flow over the next 48 hours.

[00:19:03]this big bright color area coming into the Midwest. That is very strong winds.

[00:19:08]70 knot winds here in the mid levels just coming in here and this providing an opportunity for a lot of wind shear and that wind shear helps to organize the convection, evacuate air from the top, allow air to continue to rise and keep those thunderstorms going. We're going to see supercells this morning.

[00:19:22]We're already seeing some hail and some gusty winds come through, but that's going to continue through the afternoon as instability builds and then that jet extends into the places that are under the threat tomorrow, Ohio Valley and interior northeast and providing wind shear there as well. There's instability really cranking up through the afternoon, diminishes overnight tonight and the morning and afternoon tomorrow really cranks up here in from the Mississippi Valley, lower Mississippi Valley all the way up into the interior northeast. So, a lot of instability building out here, very, very strong and it's going to be a lot of fuel for the fire, so to speak. We're looking at the future forecast radar today. As we head through the afternoon, watch thunderstorms begin to fire up here in North Carolina. Some thunderstorms making it into the panhandle of Florida.

[00:20:03]We'll see these things kind of kick up out here in the desert southwest four corners region two. But we're already seeing southeast Minnesota by the time we get into two o'clock, light up with some thunderstorms that will proceed through Wisconsin, Green Bay all the way back down through Madison into northeastern Iowa. Look for supercells to develop by late or mid to late afternoon and organized lines and clusters will move through with a tornado threat as well as a wind threat.

[00:20:28]continuing to see by the time we get into 6 7:00 uh looking at thunderstorms here in North Carolina scattered around the southeast as well and back into the desert southwest looking at some heavy pockets of torrential downpours bringing flooding out there and those thunderstorms will persist through the Great Lakes and Midwest. Look at the UP of Michigan up here. a big line of thunderstorms moving through with wind damage likely with those with strong winds in the mid- levels and that gets on in toward the northern portion of Illinois around Chicago and northern Michigan by the time we get into um toward midnight. Still looking at thunder rumbling in many areas that we were dealing with severe weather in Virginia, potentially to the northern sections of uh the Ohio Valley, getting in here in parts of northern Indiana too, back out in the desert southwest and up into the four corners region.

[00:21:17]Continue to see that monsunal flow kick in. And then by the time we wake up Tuesday morning, a lot of showers and thunderstorms along that frontal boundary as it moves to the east. Then we wash, rinse, repeat. But all of those thunderstorms begin to fire off in the eastern Ohio Valley tomorrow afternoon.

[00:21:30]And you can see just lines and clusters.

[00:21:32]Going to see some organized severe weather tomorrow. Some of these probabilities uh may be upgraded as well and more rain back out in the west tomorrow also. So watch out for a rocky day over the next couple of days. Going to be a hot day out in the plains. Look for temperatures triple digits and higher from the uh northern plains all the way back to the southern plains.

[00:21:50]Mississippi Valley back into the southeast. Not really looking at hundreds here, but it's going to be very humid with temperatures in the 90s. Cool spot up here in the northeast. 70s and 80s for highs today. Hot out west as well tomorrow. One more day of temps.

[00:22:03]Kind of still hot out west, hot across the south. And up in the north after that system moves through. We're going to see a little bit of relief from the heat and a little bit of relief from the smoke as well. Here's your smoke profile today. Looking at smoke all the way through the Ohio Valley and Midwest.

[00:22:17]Some smoke across the north as well, especially back out into the west where we've got those wildfires burning. And then we'll see uh that smoke continue to push in from the north as that system moves through and heads into the Ohio Valley tomorrow, tomorrow morning. Look at that smoke really begins to clear out a little bit. You've still going to see some haze in the air, but at the surface it should be a little bit better than it is today. And you can see how it sort of pushes to the south over time along that frontal boundary. All right, so that's your weather forecast for the day and tomorrow. Didn't have time to put a long range together. Didn't want to make this video 30 minutes, but hopefully this has helped you. As I said earlier, if you've if it's helped you at all, certainly would appreciate your support by subscribing. It helps YouTube push us out to a wider audience. Can't hit that million subscriber mark unless we get going. Get that browse feature to work.

[00:23:02]But, uh, in any event, my friends, I really appreciate you being here. Let me know if you've got any questions. I'll answer every one of those in the comments. I'm backed up on yesterday's comments, but I'll get to those today.

[00:23:10]Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful afternoon. Take care, everybody.

[00:23:13]Remember to stay sharp, chase hard, visit the Cold Rain merch store, get you some cool cold rain gear. In the meantime, have a great day. Take care.

[00:23:21]God bless.