Do high VIL (vertically integrated liquid) values mean that a storm will always produce severe weather?

Question

Or does a high VIL value simply mean that a storm contains a large amount of moisture content integrated with height in the storm?

Answer 1

High VIL values can mean the column of air has a lot of drops of water (heavy rain), many large droplets (tropical convective rain shower), shower or thunder shower with lots of small hail (non-severe sized hail), or a severe thunderstorm with large hail.  So that is part of the reason why you can not use VIL data alone as the bases for a warning.

Answer 2

More the latter.  For severe weather, other factors have to be considered, like height of the freezing level/wet bulb zero, the wind profile, precipitable water values.  I have seen nothing more than torrential rains with very high VIL's, and large hail from storms with relatively low VIL's.