Chance of thunderstorms, severe weather on Wednesday

It's almost unthinkable to be talking severe weather in Michigan on the day before Christmas Eve, but here we are. Late afternoon into the evening on Wednesday, we're looking at a fairly decent chance of thunderstorms, some of which could definitely cross into the strong category. A very powerful, negatively tilted storm system moving to our north and east will be the cause of this, and the models are suggesting that enough moisture and instability could be in place to give us some trouble. 

The NAM and GFS have both consistently predicted this amplified zone of instability/sheer, which could make for quite a major severe weather outbreak to the south if it manifests, and encroach on our neighborhood, too.

Wind profiles will, as typical for this time of year, be on the extremely strong side. I mentioned during the summer that winter storms tend to be quite a bit stronger, so when they happen during the warmer months, watch out. It just so happens that December is lining up to be a warm month in quite a few areas of the country - some of which could see a very significant severe weather outbreak on Wednesday as a result.

While the SPC has yet to officially put us under the gun for anything beyond "general thunder", I have a sneaking suspicion that they'll be upgrading our categorical outlook to "marginal" at the very least over the next 24-36 hours, namely for the southern half of lower Michigan. The models have been fairly consistent in predicting conditional favorability for severe weather in that area, though other factors such as cloud cover, early-day or previous-day left over convection, and timing as always, will have an impact. For now, the models are predicting temperatures in the 60s with dewpoints in the upper 50s, which combined with strong forcing from the powerful cold front and ridiculously high levels of wind sheer could spell a risk for damaging wind and tornadoes. 

Stay tuned for further developments.