July 11th-14th Potential Great Lakes Severe Weather Event

Well, that was a short break. =\  Lowering air pressure and rising humidity are taking root over the state as I write this (evidenced by my increasingly wicked sinus headache), and we will be looking at scattered to widespread rain and thunderstorms Tuesday, July 7th, a couple of which could be on the strong to severe side, especially in the Thumb area and other portions of southeast Michigan.

The real story, however, is what seems to be lining up for next weekend.  Long-range models are coming into agreement and it's beginning to look as though Michigan may once again be under the gun for a potential widespread severe weather event.  So far the setup doesn't look quite as mean as June 22nd did, but it's not exactly looking very friendly, either:

Taken from the 2PM GFS run, 07/05/15

Taken from the 9AM GFS run, 07/05/15

The timing of all of this seems to be a bit in dispute from run to run, however with colors like those you see above, it's increasingly likely that we could see some pretty intense storms next week. What type of hazards we see will also likely depend upon timing - just like before, if storms form over Michigan, we could see discrete supercells with tornadoes.  The gut feeling I get from this one, though,is that it'll be more of a linear, straight-line wind event. Only time will tell. As usual, I anxiously await what the short term models will have to say about this one.