Postcard beautiful Thursday, watching Friday severe risk

Welcome to Minnesota.

Please wait at the 4-way stop sign while nobody moves first as you wave the other drivers through. Commute on our congested northbound freeways on Friday afternoon to get away to the lake, then race back home Sunday.

And if you don't like the weather just wait 15 minutes. It will change. Often dramatically.

As Minnesotans we find plenty to laugh at in the mirror. We generally don't take ourselves too seriously here in Lake Wobegon Country. The gifted Garrison Keillor has made a pretty good living out of getting us to smile at our own quirks.

But alas I digress.

Our collective weather obsession is palpable here in Minnesota. We've been blessed with decades of quality meteorologists who have explained every little meteorological nuance to a weather hungry and weather savvy Minnesotans. Our Weather IQ is among the highest in the nation. At the very least, "above average."

When it comes to severe weather, our antennae perk up.

We enjoy a stunningly beautiful Thursday before the next potentially severe front blows in Friday.

The European model output shows the trend for the next week. I've laid my (Fahrenheit) temperature forecast over the Euro data. Friday looks active.

Watching Friday severe risk

Gauging actual severe weather risk is an hour to hour event. Like an excellent cook, all the ingredients need to be added just right, even if the recipe is a good one. The daily risk areas are the recipe. The actual severe weather events that day are the result of the cook adding all the ingredients in a timely fashion.

The potential is there for a severe outbreak across Minnesota Friday.

Here's an interesting read from the Twin Cities NWS on why Friday's severe risk is still dependent on how actual severe parameters unfold.

Get your inner weather geek on from the Twin Cities forecast discussion here.

Thursday night, models continue to show a warm front lifting into

southern MN in response to height falls across the Dakotas as a

short wave comes out of the Canadian Rockies. Moisture transport

and waa associated with 20-30kt llj will promote the development

of showers and thunderstorms Thursday night into Friday morning.

The greatest moisture transport will be directed toward the

Dakotas, with it looking likely that an MCS will be coming out of

the Dakotas Thursday night and working into western MN during the

morning, where categorical PoPs were included.

For the afternoon, the dynamics certainly look favorable for

seeing strong to severe storms, the main sticking point continues

to be how much destabilization do we see following what looks to

be extensive morning storms and associated cloud cover. From the

dynamics perspective, the h5 wave coming into North Dakota

Thursday night will be taking on a negative with a strong PV

anomaly coming across MN during the afternoon. At the jet level, a

NW jet streak will be nosing into western MN by the afternoon,

with great upper diffluence over the region. At the surface, a

surface low will work across northern MN Friday afternoon and

night, with a triple point looking to come across central MN. All

of this certainly supports the severe potential from the forcing

perspective. Shear looks adequate as well. Though deep layer

shear is not overly impressive at 30-40kts, most of this is down

in the 0-1km level, which will support both supercells and bowing

line segments if we are able get storms to congeal. The one

variable in all of this that has a high degree of uncertainty is

the instability. Looking at MLCAPE, the 01.12 NAM does show a good

deal of destabilization occurring, with 1k-2k j/kg by the

afternoon. The GFS though does not really allow the atmosphere to

recover as it keeps MLCAPE under 1000 j/kg. In addition, this

could be an instance where the forcing we see is too strong to

develop much instability, which would limit the strength of

updrafts we can achieve, i.e. we get lots of weaker storms as

opposed to a few strong ones.

Stay tuned.