Pattern Remains Unsettled

Clouds and more showers are in the forecast for the next couple of days as a couple different waves move through the state. One moving through right now is producing some more showers.

Most of these are pretty light and many areas can expect less then a tenth of an inch of rain today.

So why are we seeing just showers today and not seeing thunderstorms. Well that has to do with mainly levels of instability. Instability can be measured using a couple of different things; cape values, and lapse rates. Cape just basically gives a number to the amount of instability in the atmosphere, we have talked about it in previous posts. Remember, the higher the number, the more violent the storms can be.

Today though, cape values are under 100, which is very low, meaning we are just going to see some light showers.

The other device is lapse rates. A lapse rate is the rate of change in temperature observed while moving upward through the earth's atmosphere. The lapse rate for an "average" day is 6.5 degrees Celsius. To put things into perspective, a really low lapse rate is generally under 5 and a really high lapse rate is generally above 8. The higher the lapse rate the more violent storms become and therefore the heavier your rain becomes.

This is a list of lapse rates in the atmosphere this morning. The lapse rates are broken down into 50 millibar sections and the millibar height levels are listed on the left and also on the bottom. Notice that most of the lapse rates under 450 are highlighted in green and would be considered a pretty low lapse rate. The yellow and red shaded lapse rates are all in the upper portions of the atmosphere. In order to get thunderstorms, you want these high lapse rates to be more toward the surface which would be the higher millibar levels from 900 to 650.

So just expect some showers today with very little possibility of thunderstorm development.

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz