Monday, September 26, 2011

Why the rain and wind?

What a way to start a Monday.  And a horrible day to decide to kick the coffee!  What was I thinking this morning.  Moving on... 

A strengthening low currently sits in southeast Wisconsin this morning and will continue to move west, eventually into southwest Wisconsin later today.  The image on the left shows where pressure is falling and where the pressure is rising.  Low pressure will move in the direction where the pressure is falling.  Here, the solid blue lines represents pressure falls within the past three hours.  Right in the middle in southwest Wisconsin there was a pressure fall of 4 mb.  That's a pretty good pressure dip and so that tells us as meteorologists that the low is still strengthening.  And as it continues to strengthen the wind field around it will continue to increase.  Wind gusts today will possibly reach 30-35 mph.  To the south of this low in central Illinois and extending into Indiana are blue dashed lines.  These lines represent where the pressure is rising.  This is also where a little more dry air is getting wrapped into the low.  

As a low strengthens it's going to increase the upward motion within it.  When you increase the lift within a storm the showers/storms are likely going to increase as well.  This is why we've seen a good amount of rain so far this morning.  Actually, there has been a pretty heavy rain band situated over Lee County this past hour.  Moisture will continue to get wrapped into this system until the surface low weakens and moves closer to the upper level low.  Unfortunately it does look like we've got a couple more days of rain ahead of us. 

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