That wildfire is going to be a big one, already up to 1,500 acres and nothing but hot, dry and windy conditions for the next 5 days. Lots of dead and very dry spruce and fir trees in the path of it
Tell tale sign has been the lack of cumulus forming in the free warm sector. Only have cumulus forming closer to the front with the gravity wave perturbations showing the stable layer in the atmosphere. Definitely a combo of the cap and outflow from morning convection like @Chicago Storm said
storms have seemed to weaken a bit over the past hour, not sure if reached some more statically stable air or other impact from the morning convection. will have to keep an eye out if this trend continues or if there is an uptick in intensity. The exception is the tail end storm near Prairie du Chien. that thing has been producing monster overshooting tops for the past half hour.
dewpoints knocked back about 7 degrees, from 73 to 66 here as the MCS modified air moved through, back to almost full sunshine though so will be watching how quickly we can recover
As long as the convective debris clouds don't go too crazy here, excited about the potential gravity waves/mass perturbations that will move into southern Wisconsin from this complex.
Things still on track for S WI today. Look for supercells to unzip NE to SW along the front. Upscale growth will occur after an hour or two with a MCS diving SE through the Chicagoland area. Wind still the largest threat but tornado and hail potential increased from yesterday
a more classic supercell setup with 40 kts of bulk shear. Main concern will be how quickly upscale growth occurs along the front but shear vectors will be fairly orthogonal to the front.
Both today and tomorrow look fairly interesting in S WI. Shear will be a limiting factor today but instability will be off the charts. I’ll be keeping an eye on any mesoscale enhancement of the wind fields.
tomorrow has also uptrended around here. Instability will be a bit less but still on the high end of climo. Shear will be sufficient for supercells.