Robert's post....

Thunderstorms this Afternoon through early night time. Expect temperatures to climb into the upper 70s with clouds increasing as we go throughout the day.

Today's storm outbreak will not in any way be similar to the outbreak we saw two Sundays ago. This afternoon anywhere from 2:00 to 11:00 pm we should see a line of storms along the cold front passage. In this situation we have an elongated trough axis with the center of the axis well to our north into the upper Ohio valley. Due to the orientation and location of the axis we will be short on the helicity amounts (given the straight line hodograph) decreasing our chances of tornadoes to near zero. However, our 0-6 km shear will be reaching values to allow for multicell storms to a few isolated supercells to form. This time of the year when we have these types of storms you can almost always expect wind and hail to be our biggest players.

CAPE values could reach into the lower 1000s, high level clouds should not limit diurnal heating but low to mid level inhibition should limit most storms until the early evening hours.

Though the line may slow or break up along the Appalachians expect the line to reform and strengthen as it encounters lee troughing and forcing from the short wave.

Discussing with Matthew East we think that most likely we will see a severe thunderstorm watch box mid to late afternoon, given SPC's slight chance. If the line sets up we should see severe thunderstorm warnings up and down the line with long forewarning time.

As for the Masters a bulk or majority of the players should be able to get their first round in with just a few players including Tiger (1:42 tee time) having their back 9 affected by thunder or rain. This year I am going with Tim Clark as my pick to win the Masters. He tends to play well at Augusta with a second place finish in 2006. He actually has never won a PGA tour event but holds the most top 10 finishes(35) without ever winning a tour event. Also he is a NC State grad so I had to pick him.

Robert Elvington
robert.elvington@gmail.com