Issued: 4pm on Thursday, July 20th 2023
Technical Forecast Discussion
Short Term (Thursday 7-20-2023 through Sunday 7-23-2023)
Today, a strong cold front will sweep through bringing severe weather to the region. This system is a result of a broad upper-level positive tilted trough that has been lingering over the eastern half of the CONUS due to a very strong and dominant high-pressure system parked over the southwestern U.S. The system today has good potential for widespread strong and damaging wind gusts as well as potentially large hail. Steep lapse rates around 8°C/km show a very unstable atmosphere conducive to these threats. With these lapse rates, short-range models project CAPE values around 1,500 J/kg and potentially higher values, further increasing confidence in the threats for the area. Additionally, a tornado threat exists with this setup focused on northern Ohio, however, a smaller threat is still in place for the majority of Ohio including Athens. Model soundings and current observations show very short hodographs in the first 3 km, indicating that the threat of any long-track tornadoes for the Athens area is not very large, but isolated spin-ups are possible today.
Through the rest of the short term, the upper-level trough will stick around, but upper-level winds are not expected to be bringing much activity to the surface despite still the very meridional flow pattern with this system, mainly due to the positioning of the jet streak. Subsidence will provide more calm conditions for the most part until Sunday the chance for general showers and thunderstorms will return for the state on Sunday.
Long Term (Monday 7-24-2023 through Thursday 7-27-2023)
The aforementioned strong high-pressure system in the southwest U.S. will begin to shift somewhat east, bringing some upper-level ridging to the region. As this high pressure starts to dominate the region’s weather, temperatures will start to climb through the long-term period with temperature anomalies being well above normal for the 6-10 day period as outlined by the Climate Prediction Center. Other than the potential for some pop-up showers and thunderstorms with the unstable high-pressure airmass, no organized or severe convection is expected for the remainder of the forecast period, and otherwise quiet conditions can be expected.
