Snow Across the Great Lakes, Central Appalachians, and Northeast; Unsettled Weather in the West

Light to moderate snow will continue into Saturday over the Great Lakes, Central Appalachians, and Northeast. This weekend into next week, a series of atmospheric rivers will bring gusty winds, periods of heavy rain, and mountain snow to northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Colder temperatures are in store for the weekend from the Great Lakes to East Coast. Read More >

June 1, 2007 Severe Weather Event

An upper level disturbance developed from a cluster of severe thunderstorms that raked across Kansas and Missouri on May 31, 2007. This disturbance moved northeastward into eastern Iowa by early afternoon on June 1 and helped ignite severe thunderstorms over eastern Iowa and northern Illinois. One intense supercell thunderstorm formed over eastern Iowa producing tornadoes across eastern Iowa, Jo Davies county in Illinois and into southern Wisconsin. Other severe thunderstorms raked eastward across northern Illinois producing damaging winds and even some large hail. Below is a map of the preliminary severe weather reports from the afternoon.

Red "T" indicates reports of tornadoes, blue "W" indicates reports of damaging winds, green "A" indicates reports of severe hail.

Below is an image of the Milwaukee doppler radar’s estimated wind speeds around 5000 feet above the ground as the severe thunderstorms were moving into Winnebago county.

wind velocity radar imagine from Milwaukee

The light purple colors are indicative of winds around 70-75 mph blowing toward the northeast (toward Milwaukee’s radar). These winds were detected approximately 5000 feet above the ground and while the winds near the ground were likely not as intense, localized damage was reported in Winnebago county.

Here is the reflectivity imagine from the Milwaukee radar from the same time as the velocity image above.

Milwaukee Reflectivity image

Notice the slight "bowing" shape the storm is taking on as it approaches southern Winnebago county, and the more pronounced bow shape in southern Wisconsin. Many of the storms during the afternoon took on this shape, which often times is an indication of the potential for damaging winds.

Another severe thunderstorm developed about an hour later in LaSalle county in north central Illinois. Wind damage was reported from this thunderstorm near Mendota and LaSalle/Peru. Below is an image of the base velocity (winds blowing toward the radar) from the Chicago doppler radar.

LaSalle county doppler velocity image

The light purple colors are 60-70 mph winds approximately 2000 feet above the ground blowing toward the Chicago doppler radar located in Romeoville, IL. At this time these thunderstorms were likely producing damaging winds in northeast LaSalle county and went on to produce additional damage in Kendall, Kane, and DuPage counties. Here is the corresponding reflectivity image taken at the same time as the image above.

LaSalle county reflectivy image