Saturday, July 18, 2026 Thunderstorm/Severe Weather Potential

[weatherwiz]

An unseasonably strong shortwave trough amplifies as it swings across the Great Lakes region on Saturday as it advances towards the Northeast Saturday evening/overnight. As it does so, a cold front will push across the Great Lakes region during the day with a warm front lifting across the Northeast during the day on Saturday ushering in a warmer and more moist low-level airmass. Ahead of the trough features 40-45 knots of westerly mid-level flow with 30-40 knots of southwesterly flow in the lower-levels of the atmosphere which will contribute to 30-40+ knots of bulk shear, sufficient for storm organization. 

With the warm front approaching and a relatively uncapped airmass, extensive cloud cover along with scattered showers and thunderstorms are expected throughout the day and this does raise concerns about how much surface heating can occur and how much instability can build. Secondly, the timing of the rain and thunderstorms associated with a pre-frontal trough will be during the early evening, after peak heating. While instability would be a concern moving out of peak heating, as the warm front continues lifting through the region, the advection of higher theta-e air should help maintain what instability we have in place or even boost instability values a bit. 

CAMS are rather bullish in developing multiple rounds of thunderstorms across NY and PA with potential for multiple and concentrated swaths of damaging wind gusts and even potential for a few tornadoes given high helicity values. CAMS weaken this activity as it propagates across New England during the evening, however, given strong dynamics, increasing height falls, and at least weak instability (MLCAPE ~1000 JKG), localized damaging wind gusts and perhaps even an embedded tornado would remain possible as this activity crosses the region. As usual, the best potential for damaging winds or a tornado would be western sections. If instability turns out greater than forecast, there would be potential for a greater damaging wind threat across western MA and western CT.

[weatherwiz]

18z HRRR pretty ominous 

[Modfan2]

27 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

18z HRRR pretty ominous 

For who?

[weatherwiz]

3 minutes ago, Modfan2 said:

For who?

To our west but also within CT along the warm front during the afternoon with potential for supercells/isolated tornado risk. 

Then a line moving through during the evening with localized wind damage threat 

[Cyclone-68]

Not hatched but a 5% tornado threat in NYS

[WxWatcher007]

8 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

To our west but also within CT along the warm front during the afternoon with potential for supercells/isolated tornado risk. 

Then a line moving through during the evening with localized wind damage threat 

Might be some flood risk if those storms train in CT. 

[weatherwiz]

4 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Might be some flood risk if those storms train in CT. 

yeah certainly could see some flash flooding