Potential is high for strong and severe storms across the state tomorrow.
Nathan Heinert is lead meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Bismarck. He says as of right now, some western, all of central and all of eastern North Dakota is in a level 3 out of 5 threat level – which suggests numerous severe thunderstorms. And he says several elements are coming together to make the system impactful for the region.
He says the atmosphere is warming and moistening, creating the perfect setup.
"We're looking at storms initiating across western areas of North Dakota; mainly, large hail is going to be the main threat with those storms," Heinert says.
"And then as they progress into central areas of the state; large hail, damaging winds and even a few tornadoes are going to be possible late afternoon into early tomorrow evening. Those threats will continue as they push into eastern North Dakota during the evening hours, and then eventually we're expecting these storms to form a linear system - which means mainly a line of storms, which would make the strong winds the main threat as we get into the late evening hours tomorrow."
Heinert says as we get closer to the initiation of these storms, it’s possible the threat level could be upgraded to a 4 out of 5 – which is what happened in western North Dakota last night. But for now, confidence is strongest at level 3.
He says there is not much threat for severe weather for the rest of this week; only some hit and miss scattered showers and, later in the week, some cooling temperatures.
