10:45 AM Saturday
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Numerous showers and thunderstorms have been moving through the Finger Lakes this morning, associated with a warm front extending south from a strong area of low pressure to our northwest.
These showers and storms have primarily been heavy rain producers with no severe weather expected yet.
As expected, southerly winds associated with the warm front are bringing the smoke plume back toward the Finger Lakes region after it moved south yesterday. Air quality has been decreasing through the morning and is now Level 4/Red/Unhealthy or Level 5/Purple/Very Unhealthy across the region.
Showers and storms should depart the area during the midday hours. The early afternoon will have smokey skies. The smoke may reduce temperatures slightly, but the atmosphere is still expected to become very favorable for additional thunderstorm development this afternoon.
However, this is where thing become more complicated.
There will be multiple features in the atmosphere capable of interacting with the favorable environment to trigger thunderstorms, including an approaching cold front dropping south from Canada, and subtle boundaries left behind by this morning’s activity. This makes it difficult to project how the later afternoon will evolve, and when and where storms will become most likely.
Any time from about the mid-afternoon through sunset, there will be a chance for storm cells to rapidly develop and become severe. The discrete, isolated cells will have a threat for all modes of severe weather, though the largest threat will be damaging winds. These cells may cluster into one or more lines of storms. The chance for a widespread line of severe wind will be greatest with the cold front late in the day, but how that potential interacts with the earlier development is a mystery that cannot be solved.
The bottom line on the severe threat is that there will be many instances of wind damage around Western NY, the Finger Lakes, and Central NY.
This may include concentrated swaths of wind damage from straight-line winds/microbursts and/or isolated tornadoes. The threat from straight-line winds is greater than the threat from tornadoes, as they are capable of the same degree of damage over a much larger area. They also occur much more frequently than tornadoes, and can also coincide with tornadic activity.
However, the Finger Lakes region as a whole, and certainly the sub-areas within the region, are small enough that the greater degrees of severe weather could end up mostly missing. That chance will come down to very subtle, almost random features.
My best advice is to prepare for the chance for power outages and tree damage. If you have outdoor plans this afternoon and evening, have a plan for seeking shelter and be ready to enact it rapidly, since storm development may happen very fast. At the same time, realize that even in large severe weather events like this has the potential to be, most people will not see highly destructive weather. Having a plan in place to deal with that should it come and taking warnings seriously in a calm, prepared manner can go a very long way in staying safe and keeping anxiety down.
The silver lining to this afternoon’s weather is that the smoke plume should pass through, leading to improving air quality later in the day and into the nighttime hours. Some additional light smoke is likely tomorrow, especially in the morning. It remains to be seen how much it will impact air quality, but it should not be as serious as the last few days or as it is becoming now.
Depending on how the situation evolves, I may or may not activate a live blog this afternoon.
At the very least, I will post several updates to the Weather Updates section, which can be found in full here but will also display as clickable thumbnail links in this post and on the FLX Weather homepage. Severe weather warnings automatically get posted to this section as well. I may also update this post on occasion for redundancy as later visitors find their way, so you can easily just keep this page open in a tab and refresh it, knowing the latest information will be available either directly or as a linked Weather Update.
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