Temperatures this weekend were pretty amazing…  Highs on both Saturday and Sunday rocketed into the mid 80’s.  While the humidity remained fairly low….

But when ever the wind is cranking… you know a storm system is close by…  First the wind lets talk about the wind.  Su Berry was kind enough to send in this picture from the OSU game on Saturday. (Awesome pic by the way!)

Winds during the afternoon on both Saturday and Sunday gusted into the low 30s with sustained winds much of the day at about 20.  As soon as the sun set and temperatures began to cool the wind began to lift.  It was still around… just a little higher in the atmosphere.   Here are some wind observations from about 9pm on Sunday.  The peak wind gusts from the day are on the right… the current wind speeds in the center.  Just 30 minutes after sunset the winds almost completely backed off!

The reason for all the wind… and warmth is that powerful area of High pressure off to our east.  This is a fairly common pattern during the summer, but it can’t last very long this time of year. 

Where the High pressure (or sinking air) is a little weaker… storms tend to form, and thats exactly whats going on from Texas northward to Wisconsin.  In fact the storms are so explosive… the storm prediction center issued a “High Risk” for Sunday… a title reserved mostly for Tornado Outbreaks.  Looks like the brunt of the action will occur in North Texas through OK and Kansas.

Now the big question… as high pressure slides off to the east, will we see the same severe weather here?  Right now it looks like as the system works east this system will loose some steam… but the most important factor seems to be the time of day.  The NAM model has the cold front gradually pushing through on Tuesday morning.

The GFS stalls the front a little longer and has it come through early afternoon on Tuesday.  With little forcing, the time of day is critical… if it slides through 4am – 2pm (which seems most likely) we will just see some showers with a few isolated thunderstorms.  However if the front gets delayed further… 4pm and on… we will have to be prepared for some strong storms.