Thunderstorm Outlook for Today
Regional Impacts
Isolated thunderstorms across parts of the Atlantic provinces today. Some of these storms could become more robust over northern NF and SE Lab.. the main threat are strong gusts possibly exceeding 70 km/h and heavier showers at a rate of 10-15mm/h.
Convective Discussion
At 12z the 500mb low was located over the mid-coast of Labrador with a thermal trough extending to the St. Lawrence Valley. This feature will slowly slide eastward today and along with a surface trough will become the focus for isolated pulse type thunderstorms during the afternoon especially over N portions of NF. All soundings across the region (except NS) were indicating a convective temperature ranging from 21 to 25 which should be reached fairly easily despite the limited sunshine.. with a couple of moisture axis maintaining Td’s above 16.. the result is MLCAPE between 500 to 800 J/kg. Under these conditions widespread Cu/TCU field is expected to grow during the afternoon and some of these cumuliform clouds should reach the next stage and evolve into CB’s with tops extending to 9 km, well below the tropopause which is lowering. Precipitable water analysis is showing 25-30 mm throughout the area, and as much as 35-40 over NS where stratiform cloud and embedded TCU’s are exiting.
Thunderstorm Outlook for Sunday