Monday overnights showers and storms are long gone as I write this blog. It's now 10 AM and the sun is out. That should allow us to warm pretty quickly the rest of the morning. It seemed pretty obvious that that was going to be the case when I came in early today and that's one of the reason's I bumped up our high to 78 for today. That should increase the chance for some strong to severe weather over at least parts of central New York this afternoon now it is a matter of fine tuning where this is going to happen.
On the surface, your attention might be drawn to a cold front that as of 9 AM I analysized near Buffalo and Erie, PA. One normally associates cold fronts with lines of thunderstorms but inthis case we may need to focus our attention on something more subtle -- a trough of low pressure. This showed up on my analysis as a wind shift line from Elmira to Altoona, PA. There are already some clouds with this feature and earlier this morning some showers over southwest New York.
This solves a bit of mystery I had when I looked at the model data earlier Tuesday. The last couple of runs of the Timecast computer model have keyed in on areas southeast of Syracuse as the genesis area for thunderstorms early Tuesday afternoon, well east of the actual cold front. That would seem to match where that trough of low pressure is going to end up by 1 or 2 pm in the afternoon. If that is the case then Cortland-Norwich and Cooperstown stand the best chance for seeing some strong winds and even hail from thunderstorms.
Earlier today the Storm Prediction Center briefly had central New York in the 'Slight' risk for severe weather but a couple of hours ago it scaled the area down to what you see to the right. However, seeing all the surface heating that is going to take place in the next 4 or 5 hours and the high humidity, I gotta believe there are going to be a few severe storms southeast of Syracuse today.
Also, if this trough is the focal point for thunderstorms much of Syracuse and points north and west may end up dry. Check out my Noon forecast for more.
