high risk

I think it makes sense. Still come questions about how much heating will occur and whether some of the low-level moisture will get mixed out, but the solutions with the warmer and more moist PBLs certainly suggest scattered strong storms during the afternoon.

It's possible, but the threat would be after dark this evening, and most sfc-based instability should be gone by then.

That was a nice start to the convective season this afternoon. As for Sunday, my guess is that we wake up in the morning to a Day 2 MRGL. Seems quite likely that there will be some storms around later in the day (especially north of DC), and parameters aren't great, there is probably just enough low-level and deep-layer shear to get some decent wind gusts and hail. This will become a more robust threat if the higher NAM dew points (low 60s) are attained.

c'mon over to the April obs thread.

moderate graupel shower here in southern Howard County

I actually wouldn't totally rule out snowflakes in some of the heaviest cores.

The freezing levels are really low, so I'm pretty sure that any heavier cores like that would put down some hail or graupel here in the metro areas.

One potential bit of sneakiness for tomorrow: while most guidance seems to have backed off on the chances of the early morning precip ending as a period of wet snow (although it still seems like a few mangled flakes are possible north and northwest of DC), they are more bullish on the idea of some showers in the afternoon as the upper trough axis swings through, especially on the west side of DC. If you squint at the P-type maps, you can see a little blue in the heavier cores, and the forecast soundings have very low freezing levels and a little bit of instability. I would not be surprised to see some heavier graupel (or even briefly wet snow) showers around.

maybe 50s Saturday and near 70 Sunday? 850 temps still look pretty low on Saturday......

500 j/kg of CAPE will do that....

Back in town now, and while this is nowhere as good of a setup as it looked like it might be a couple of days ago, it's not dead. The instability is of course the big question, but with strong forcing on the front and pretty good shear, there will likely be a line of convection ahead of the front. (It is clearly getting organized now). If we get up near 70 over the next few hours, there is probably some wind damage potential. The better chances are certainly further south, but I'm not totally writing it off north of town.

I fully agree. The shear on all guidance is incredibly impressive - I'm even seeing big, looping hodographs and PDS TOR on some forecast soundings. Still some questions about instability: the parent NAM by far looks the best. GFS keeps showers and clouds around for much of the day, limiting heating. NAM nest seems to mix out the low level moisture a bit during the afternoon, although even that model has an impressive QLCS approaching late in the day.

I'm totally out on this one. Honestly, I'm not sure that discussion makes sense unless they're talking about the very southern part of the CWA. We do not get anything close to SVR here from elevated storms above a stable boundary layer. I'll consider it a big win if I hear thunder Thursday evening.

It's my day!!! I'm humbled, but I can't help but think that a high-end MDT would have worked fine for today..... In other news, this may have been covered elsewhere, but the NCEP "critical weather day" means that GFSv16 can't be implemented today (or tomorrow with the MDT). As a result, it has to wait until next Monday.

We’re getting close, but implementation is actually on Wednesday morning.