June 27: 80mph Wind, Baseball Hail, Tornadoes?

There’s a noticeable disturbance tracking east through the northern Rockies. It’s got some strong upper-level winds tagging along, and they’re set to roll into the northern Great Plains by evening. Meanwhile, at the surface, warm and humid air is streaming up into the Dakotas, fueled by a low-pressure system forming near where South Dakota and Wyoming meet. All that heat and moisture is setting the stage for severe weather.

Things should stay calm for a bit this afternoon because of a lid on the atmosphere, but as solar heating takes place, expect that to weaken. By mid-afternoon, I expect we’ll see a few storms start to fire up, but they may hold off until closer to dark. The setup’s looking intense—very unstable air and just the right amount of wind shear to spin up some strong storms, likely supercells. These could drop some serious hail, maybe even golf ball-sized to baseball-sized or bigger in the beefier ones. There’s also a small window early this evening where we might see a tornado or two.

As we head into the evening, a few storm clusters could take shape, and the stronger ones might bring some crazy wind gusts—thinking 60-80 mph in spots. The main concerns will be those gusts and maybe some lingering hail, but things should start to wind down late tonight as the storms drift east.

Tomorrow

Looks like we’ll start off Saturday with some thunderstorms already going across northern Minnesota, thanks to a push of warm, moist air from a low-level jet and whatever is left of today’s mess.

As the morning storms move out, the atmosphere’s going to reload southwest of that activity. Expect hot temps in the mid to upper 80s, with muggy dewpoints in the 70s creating a lot of instability (fuel) for storms.

By afternoon, we’re likely to see isolated to scattered thunderstorms popping up, possibly building off the leftovers of those morning storms. Over in North Dakota and northern Minnesota, the winds aloft should be strong enough to support some supercell storms, which could bring some big hail and strong wind gusts. Farther south, in eastern South Dakota and southern Minnesota, the storms might lean more toward clusters rather than supercells due to weaker wind shear, but they could still come with gusty winds and some hail.