First Warn Weather Team: June 2012

Saturday, June 30, 2012

We're Havin' a Heat Wave!

Temperatures topped out at 93 degrees at the Greater Rockford Airport on Saturday afternoon. That represented the 16th time this year that the temperature has reached 90 degrees or higher. The next 7 days look like they will all be above 90 reaching the middle 90's several days. Higher humidity will build back into the area along with the high temperatures with dew points reaching 70 degrees or a little higher starting on Sunday. The heat index on Sunday afternoon will be 95 to 100, and may reach 105 or higher a few times next week. This will be a bonified heat wave eventually taking a toll on most people. Here are some suggestions on easing the effects of the excessive prolonged heat... 1. Drink plenty of cool water... 2. Wear light colored clothing. 3. Limit the amount of time ouitside, and get into air conditioned areas for relief. 4. Avoid vigorous exercise in the heat as muich as possible.
Weak high pressure is moving across northern Wisconsin early tonight, and will move over to northern lower Michigan and fade out as a weak front attemps to lift toward the Stateline from the southwest. It will start out mostly clear overnight, but will become partly cloudy toward daybreak. It will be a little on the warm side overnight with lows in the middle to upper 60's. The front will dissolve into a trough of low pressure stretching from extreme northwest Illinois across northeastern Iowa to a weak low near Mason City by the noon hour on Sunday. An area of thunderstorms is expected to develop over northeastern Iowa just north of the trough that will move toward the east/southeast. So it will be partly sunny, hot, and more humid on Sunday with a chance of thunderstorms in our area. There is a slight chance that some thunderstorms may develop to severe limits with damaging winds and large hail. The chances of thuderstorms will diminish to about 20% by evening as the disturbance moves off to the southeast. It will be hot and humid with isolated thundrstorms on Monday. Monday night will be warm and muggy under partly cloudy skies. It will be mostly sunny on Tuesday, but there could be some isolated thunderstorms on Tuesday night. It will be partly cloudy, hot, and humid on the 4th of July, and the night looks dry.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Friday Night Storm Reports

With severe storms rolling through the Stateline Friday night, we saw plenty of storm reports. Here are a few of them:

-60mph wind gust in Garden Plain (Whiteside Co.)
-60mph wind gust and several trees downed in Milledgeville (Carroll Co.)
-74mph wind gust and several trees/power lines down in Dixon (Lee Co.)
-Around 4,500 power outages in Dixon area
-Downed power lines in Franklin Grove (Lee Co.)

The craziest storm report of the night... a 92mph wind gust in Oswego (Kendall Co.). That's the equivalent of an EF1 tornado!

Fortunately, severe weather chances have died down for the night. Spotty rain chances are in the forecast for Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon as highs warm back into the 90s.

Storm moving in

Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Ogle and Lee counties until 8:30pm. Intense line of storms just to the west of Ogle and Lee counties. A report of wind gusts near 60 mph to Milledgeville - heavy rain also reported.

7:30pm Update: A Severe Thunderstorm Warning has been issued for Whiteside County until 8:30pm. Thunderstorms intensified as they moved out of Iowa into Whiteside county this evening producing 60 mph wind gusts near Garden Plain. This storm is currently moving east around 40mph to 45mph and may continue to produce gusty winds as well as quarter sized hail.

A cluster of thunderstorms formed near Des Moines, IA earlier this afternoon and have since quickly raced east producing damaging wind gusts near 80 mph across parts of Iowa, Benton and Linn counties in Iowa. The storm isn't as strong as it was previous, however, it still continues to produce wind gusts of 60 mph as it's now east and north of Cedar Rapids. The storm is currently moving to the east - slight north of east - and will likely cross over near the Carroll/Jo Daviess county line around 7pm. These storms will continue to move into an unstable environment so the threat for strong storms exists through the evening. Updates will continue here as needed through the evening and overnight.

More cloud pics...

Hannah Hunziker: Ridott

Dave Schmidt

Everett Peterson

Greg Meyers

Paige Carter

Paula French Hall

Cyndy Miller

Janelle Huston

James Jennings: Davis Junction

Geneva Helland: Rockton

Hannah Hunziker Ridott

Beth Nagel: Shannon

Robin Racey: Freeport

Grace Dark

Scary looking clouds

A lot of you are wondering what kind of ominous clouds you saw this morning. Well, they are nothing to be concerned about, and they are called "undulatus" clouds. They often are compared to waves in an ocean, as they can be weaved within each other or parallel. According to the AMS Glossary, "The formation is by gravity waves that exhibit broad, nearly parallel lines of cloud oriented perpendicular to the wind direction, with cloud bases near an inversion surface."

Justin Pletsch
WTVO Weather Intern