Today's severe weather forecast is a rather low-confidence forecast. A cold front is forecasted to move through the region later this afternoon and evening. As this cold front moves through the area the environment that will be in place will be modestly favorable for strong to severe storm development. However, there are quite a few variables that could easily preclude severe storm development.
Showers and thunderstorms have moved through the region this morning. These storms produced rather high rainfall totals across parts of West Michigan and prompted a Flood Advisory for some areas along I-96 and US-131.
We'll continue to see partly cloudy skies becoming mostly sunny, warm, and humid in the wake of these showers and storms. This will allow for the environment to destabilize (or become favorable for severe storm development) as we head into the afternoon hours later today ahead of the aforementioned cold-front.
The problems with the severe weather threat today are as follows:
The cold front is rather slow-moving; as the lagging cold front progresses southeast through the Great Lakes region this afternoon it may not reach us here in West Michigan until closer to 6:00-9:00 PM. This means that any storms that do develop will be deprived of conditions that exist during peak daytime heating (typically 4:00 PM) and the environment will have begun to experience evening cooling to at least some degree.
A rather strong capping inversion (a mechanism that acts to prevent storm development) could be maturing as this cold front moves in and may act to inhibit the ability for storms to develop.
The bottom line is that there is a low risk for severe weather today. Not everyone will see storms but if your area does experience storms then they could be strong to weakly severe as we head into the evening hours this morning.
We'll continue to provide updates as this threat evolves.
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