What's with all this crazy weather?!?

Question

I live in the midwest, Michigan to be exact - in a small suburb of Flint. We have been having odd weather lately - last night, a horrbile thunderstorm. The day before, scorching heat. The day before that - it was SUPER humid and windy! What the heck!

It's not just us - it's all of the midwest. 2 days ago in Milwaukee, WI there was a tornado warning. The next day, there was another one! In fact, there has been about 16 reported tornadoes in the midwest. Crazy! Anyone have any clue why this is happening? Anything is appreciated. :]

Answer 1

Although you are no expert in meterology, let me tell you the factors that are causing the severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in the Midwest right now.....

We have three factors that triggers such thunderstorms.....

Convective available potential energies...or CAPEs, measured in j/kg, or joules per kilogram.

Storm-relative helicities, or SRHs, measured in meters squared per second squared (m2/s2). This is the measure of the atmopshere's buoyancy....the more buoyant the atmosphere, the more violent the storms will be.

Bulk shear at the surface, at the 0-1 killometer levels.

Any high values of these three parameters are likely to set off powerful thunderstorms, especially ones of the tornadic kind.

For example, SRH values to 500 m2/s2 can mean a EF5 tornado is imminent. EF5 tornadoes are the worst tornadoes you can experience.

CAPEs to 4500 j/kg can likely mean significant tornadic thunderstorms will form or very explosively develop, especially in an uncapped atmosphere with virtually no or little CIN (or "convective inhibition"...like a mid-level cap with warm temperatures in the cap---that means the mid-level atmosphere has stable air parcels that won't explode convectively into thunderstorms)....that means the atmosphere is extremely unstable and extremely juiced. Meteorologists say that high CAPE values means that "the atmosphere is ready to explode" or is "definitely under the gun." It is almost like releasing excess methane gas in a coal mine, and any spark or flame exposed to that gas will likely lead to an disastrous coal mine explosion.

That means, innocent-looking cumulus clouds will blow up in large scale into giant cumulominbus clouds as fast as 25 minutes, bringing thunderstorms from the pre-mature to the mature stage as fast as 25 minutes. Mature-stage thunderstorms seem to be the nastiest thunderstorms of all.

Low-level bulk shear wind values from 30-50 knots occur in non-severe thunderstorms; but in severe/tornadic thunderstorms, they can be as high as 70 knots...or about 72 mph. This often lead to things like gustnados, gust front winds, derechos, and microbursts ("microbursts" are straight-line thunderstorm winds that often aren't related to tornadoes) with winds as high as 120 mph.

I live in Chicago and we got socked by a very nasty non-severe thunderstorm two hours ago. I saw plenty of cloud-to-ground lightning, winds as high as 55 mph, and rainfall rates as high as 3 inches to 4 inches per hour. We almost got a severe thunderstorm...but this is a sub-severe thunderstorm.

Chicago could get socked by another round of thunderstorms tonight...and some of the storms could turn severe and lead to an isolated tornado or too.

A cold front dividing much cooler air on the north side or back end of the front, and much warmer, much more humid air ahead of the front is the main focusing mechanism for those thunderstorms I am getting today, but not only in Chicago..but also in your area.

In the warm sector of the front, the atmosphere is extremely unstable with very high dew points (up to the 70s or even 80), and hence a lot of moisture for the atmosphere to work with.

Add a very strong low level jet stream that steers storms and triggers vertical wind shear right at the surface and even at the mid-levels, and you get a risk of mesocyclone-related thunderstorms, also known as mesoconvective complexes.

You may have been hit by thunderstorms formed along a 200-300 mile swath, or line, of mesocale (meaning "large scale" or "synoptic scale") convective (means "having to do with heat transfer triggering more unstable air parcels that can explode into thunderstorms"; can also mean "thunderstorm-related")  thunderstorms called a mesoscale convective complex (or MCC). They are also called "mesocyclones"....that means, a large area of thunderstorms that can be or not be tornadic. In layman's terms, a MCC is a wide swath of widespread supercell thunderstorms (thunderstorms with rotating updrafts which have the potential to produce tornadoes, but not in all supercells).

When MCCs form from southwest to northeast, there is the risk of not only tornadic storms in some cases, but also "training of storms"--that is....one thunderstorms hits one area, and another thunderstorm immediately on its heels of the first thunderstorm hits the same area.....followed by another thunderstorm hitting the same area again....

Training thunderstorms are highly efficient rain producers that can cause flash flooding. Why? Such storms occur mainly with slow-moving cold fronts or warm fronts or when there is no upper level push or kick (for example, a upper-level jet stream) to move the storms fast. Training thunderstorms go usually only 5-10 miles per hour (whether they are individual thunderstorm cells or the whole line of thunderstorms) and can create a lot of rain in a very short time.

I hope all of this will help you know why we are experiencing this turbulent weather now......

Answer 2

maybe the weather is going through puberty. it's transitioning from spring to summer.

Answer 3

I'm from Milwaukee and we had tornado warnings three days in a row, like you said.  Today, we got these super strong winds, like 70 mph, and tons of trees are down and 80 houses are damaged.  Roads are closed everywhere.  I think it really just has to do with living in the midwest.  They always say in Wisconsin that it can be 80 degrees and sunny one day, and the next it could get down to 30 degrees and snowing. Oh yeah, and my school is closed because of water damage.  Right now, though, it's sunny and like 80 degrees.  Ironic, huh.

Answer 4

There is nothing odd about it. This is normal weather for JUNE.