Chinook

It looks like the forest fire crud will be back tomorrow, according to the HRRR-smoke. As for me, improvements in visibility started on Thursday night. From Friday to today. we've had nicer blue skies, and some clouds at times. Also, temperatures have not been not scorching. It would be really nice to see some days with a high of 85 and a low of 50-55 though. The cold front/monsoon surge combo should be Thursday-Friday with heavier rain only in the mountains. So that's kind of a bummer, I thought maybe some higher rainfall might even be in here on Wednesday or Thursday, but that should be kind of wrong.

Current radar shows that TS Grace is composed of a series of thunderstorms, that are not spiraling around a center of circulation. Currently thunderstorms are over Dominica and Martinique, with a bigger blob to the east of Dominica. link for radar loops https://www.barbadosweather.org/BMS_Radar_Composite_Resp.php#

the squall line as it affected Toledo and Detroit nearly an hour ago

tornado near Kendall, WI (2:07PM Central)

This is definitely bad today, maybe visibility of 4-5 miles for me. I can't see Horsetooth Mtn in Fort Collins from the north side of Loveland.

non-tornadic supercell at Wahoo, Nebraska, with excellent severe weather parameters in the area.

The surface smoke is quite a bit worse today. It looks like it will be moving south into Denver.

This looks awful, combination of Dixie Fire and Beckwourth Complex fire, a total of 427,000 acres.

My place had rain only on Friday. Parts of Fort Collins, Loveland, and other places got over 1.0" of rain on Friday, so that's not too bad. Just one good day of rain in July does not make the grass get a lot greener. Parts of the West have done much better on the monsoon precipitation recently! As for our area, the wildfire smoke just seems to keep coming back, particularly yesterday and today. For me, my visibility of the mountains was limited to the foothills less than 10 miles away.

Fort Collins and Loveland both had a range of below 0.5" up to over 1.1".

My area has cooled off a lot. Wednesday it was 98 degrees. Yesterday was up near 90 degrees, and it cooled down so slowly, it might have been upper 70's at midnight. This afternoon we were 90 with a dew point of 60, but now around 73 degrees. It looks like I am about to get two rain showers colliding over me. I hope the people in the canyons are OK. update: moderate rain and several rumbles of thunder are here now.

Sorry to hear this was a scary night for you! I imagine it would be very stressful to hide in the basement at midnight or 1:00AM, when you don't know what's happening outside. This was the 1-hour maximum rotation detected by nearby radars. The highest rotation on here was SE Of Watertown, but the preliminary report was that the tornado was 3 mi SW of Watertown. (Watertown is in the middle of this image)

This was a confirmed tornado near Steubenville, OH, which is near West Virginia (5:41PM Eastern time)

Plenty of rain expected for the Great Basin and Rockies. This evening, there are already some heavy storms over north central Colorado.

tornado warning that happened near Fond Du Lac at 11:59PM Central time two tornado warnings north of Madison at 12:41AM central time

possible tornado at MN/WI border

06z update- upgrade to Moderate. some highlights here: highly unstable and sheared forecast sounding in northwest Wisconsin (3km NAM) in advance of the convective line

Loveland was up to 94-99 degrees today, effectively the hottest recent day. South Dakota was up to 109 degrees east of Rapid City. Many areas of the central states now have heat advisories. The wildfire smoke is in many areas of the country. Smoke may still be affecting surface air quality here, but I'm not quite sure. Good news coming up! The models have substantial rainfall for the West for the weekend. Friday should become rainy for the Colorado mountains, and it should spread eastward. A monsoon moisture surge will combine with a weak cold front or maybe just some weakness in the upper level ridge.

Tornado at Armada, MI

The West Pacific seems to be roaring back to life after a weak year last year and a weak spring/early summer. Typhoon In-Fa is east of Taiwan now at 85 kt (JTWC). As mentioned, this will mostly affect islands between Taiwan and Japan as it weakens. There may be another typhoon quite soon, away from land.

Higher monsoon rainfall has been increasing as of lately, with some areas of Arizona and New Meixco, and Rocky Mtn National Park being above normal precipitation for this month up to this date. It seems that rainfall will be widespread in the next 2 days, for much of the same areas already described.

The surface smoke amount hasn't been too bad for a couple of days, but upper-level smoke is more dense. just a few minutes earlier. I did a slight contrast adjustment on this one

sunset 7/18 sunset 7/13

radar image from 2:53 Eastern Time, south of Barrie, Ontario