Weather Blog: Zeroing in on Friday's severe weather potential

What a perfect July morning! Lows in the 60s will be with us again on Thursday morning as low humidity continues. Daytime highs today will be in the upper 80s, so it'll definitely still be very warm out there regardless of the humidity. We inch a little closer to 90 degrees tomorrow.

Friday's storm potential is at top of mind today as we start to key in on the specifics behind it. It still appears that the greatest threat on Friday will be just southwest of most of our area, a little closer to Evansville and Owensboro. The Storm Prediction Center has a Slight Risk of severe weather out for most of our counties and the aforementioned areas southwest of us on Friday. A major point of uncertainty with all of this is how the Friday morning storm chance evolves. The NAM model this morning has barely had it, while the GFS and Euro have been far more aggressive with morning storms that decrease afternoon and early evening severe weather potential due to stabilization of the atmosphere. There's no doubt that severe weather can happen this time of year even with morning storms just beforehand, but if they stick around too long then the afternoon is a severe weather bust with rain-cooled air and cloud cover. This is primarily why an Alert Day for Friday has not been issued quite yet, but with more data later this morning and this afternoon we'll likely put one out very soon. Should storms happen Friday afternoon and early evening, they would have a VERY unstable environment to work with and a modest amount of wind shear. This does not look like a tornado outbreak-maker to me, but more so a widespread damaging wind potential since the directional shear just isn't strong enough. There's a better potential for Friday night into early Saturday storms with this setup since the front will be closer by at that point, and some of those could have damaging winds even if the afternoon doesn't pan out. Tricky setup!

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The weekend continue to be a tough forecast. We've raised rain chances for both Saturday and Sunday given the latest trends. Saturday's rain chance is primarily in the morning with the leftovers from Friday night's storms, but scattered storms are possible during the afternoon, too. Sunday's chance is centered around afternoon scattered storms. All of this wet weather is thanks to a cutoff low pressure system that will linger over the Ohio Valley this weekend. It won't be a washout here, but you'll definitely want to have the WAVE 3 News Weather app for live radar and forecast updates! We'll start to dry out early next week as this low pressure system moves east.

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Do you like cooler weather? The next two weeks don't look too hot at all! Even though a couple days are very close, we still don't have any 90s in our forecast over the next couple weeks. Persistent troughing (low pressure aloft) over the east will keep the ridge of high pressure suppressed to the west, taking the heat with it. This will likely take us through the end of the month with this pattern! But what about August, you say? It looks like a reversal of the July cool-down as average to slightly above average temperatures take over once again. Enjoy the cooler weather while it lasts!