Quick June Review+Severe Weather Threat Today

Good morning! After a couple of weeks of travel I am back today; could I ease back in with a quiet weather day?? Nooooooo. We will talk about the severe weather threat in just a second. First, a quick June review. In the temperature department, it was a warmer than average month. 2.5 degrees above average in fact.Would you believe that after the FRIGID start to 2014, June was our 3rd consecutive above average month?? Since April 1, Youngstown is 1.7 degrees above average. Not a bad turnaround. With several rounds of thunderstorms, June was a very wet month in much of the region.   Most of these are rain gauges that have the capability of uploading their data to the internet.OK, on to the severe weather threat today. Thankfully the threat for severe weather across northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania will not be as high as it was last night to our west. Check out these storms around 11:30pm as the rolled east of Chicago into northern Indiana. On the right...Doppler Radar estimated wind speeds of 70-100 moph! Not surprisingly, there was lots of wind damage.While we do not expect a repeat of that, conditions are favorable for some nasty storms to form this afternoon. It is a VERY juicy airmass overhead. This morning's dewpoints: It feels like Orlando.We have a potent trough of low pressure moving across the Upper Midwest today; it's causing uplift of that warm, very humid air: How unstable, or buoyant, will the air mas be this afternoon? Here's the latest hi-res model CAPE values (a measure of instability): Those are some pretty high values across the region.  So to review, we have the moisture in place, the air is free to rise and we have a "trigger" to help the air to lift. So what's gonna happen??I suspect the most active period is roughly from 3/4pm to 8/9pm. A quick tour of the latest HRRR model's "simulated" radar:3pm: 4pm: 5pm: 6pm: 7pm: Notice a couple of things. 1) The model suggests that the threat is highest south of I-80 or perhaps even 224. 2) It winds things down quickly well before sunset.  These are trends that we will be watching all midday/afternoon. If several consecutive model runs show these ideas, our confidence will increase.The Storm Prediction Center has the odds of a tornado at 2% (within 25 miles of any one spot): Hail and damaging wind ods are the same, 15% for the WFMJ viewing area: These odds may need to be lowered in the northern part of our viewing area if these early morning model trends continue.Jess has you covered on 21 News at noon and I will be on tonight at 6 with the latest. As always, I will be posting all kinds of updates on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks for reading!Eric