Temperatures across northern Illinois fall back following Tuesday's cold front

The work week began with a taste of summer as highs surged into the low to mid 80s. Though strong winds played a major role into Monday's significant warm up, the milder air these winds provided us with ended up being our "saving grace" so to speak from the late-day  severe weather potential. 

How so? Well, the milder air put a "cap" or lid on our atmosphere. For thunderstorms to properly evolve and rapidly turn severe, you need the temperature profile in that section of the atmosphere to cool from the surface to the upper-levels. 

However, if there is a layer of warm air roughly 5000 to 7000 ft above the surface, this prevents the air from rising, limiting storm growth and development. Now, if the cap were able to break, the air could keep rising, allowing clouds and storms to grow. Fortunately for us, the cap held strong, putting a lid on our severe potential despite there being a very conducive environment for severe storms in place. The storms that did manage to form in the system's warm sector remained to our north and west, leaving us fairly dry into Tuesday morning.

On the backside of this morning's cold front, clouds will decrease, leaving us with a good amount of sun for the afternoon. However, winds will remain quite gusty, especially during the morning. And this time, winds will be blowing out of the northwest. This will cool temperatures from the upper 60s this morning, into the low 60s by the afternoon. 

 

 

Cloud cover will return Wednesday as our weather pattern turns a bit active once again. Waves of showers and thunderstorms are likely to sweep through as early as Wednesday afternoon, and will continue off and on through Thursday, Thursday night, and even into early Friday.