Heads Up This Weekend

As we have briefly mentioned over the last day or so, looks like we will see our first chance at some thunderstorms for the latter half of the weekend and early next week. The first graphic is for Sunday night and the second is for Monday. These two show the predicted CAPE values for those time periods according to this particular model. CAPE stands for Convective Available Potential Energy. The easiest way to think about it is the higher the value of CAPE, the higher the likelihood of seeing thunderstorms. The values for us in South Dakota peak at about 1000 J/kg. This is a really high number for this time of the year. To give you a little perspective; in the summer you want CAPE values to be between 2000-3000 to really get thunderstorms going. But for March in South Dakota, you could get thunderstorms to fire up in as little as 200-300 cape. Because of these values, we will keep a close eye on this storm and keep you updated throughout the week and the weekend.

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz