Despite a tornado warning,
there was surprisingly only 20 kt for the maximum wind, with pockets of almost
30 kt not far away – just the luck of the draw. It also cooled down more than
expected last night before the storms, with a high of only 73F. Perhaps the clear
sky really led to enough radiational cooling to prevent a higher high despite
the strong winds right ahead of the cold front. Although the wind was a bust, the storms did bring 0.77" and increased clouds for most of the rest of the day, but the clouds are clearing now, setting up for a virtually cloudless day 4.
Clear sky and light winds for
tonight into tomorrow as surface high pressure moves in means a classic moderately large diurnal cycle, with good
radiational cooling tonight and a quick warmup tomorrow, though the cooling
tonight being slightly tempered by a bit of an urban heat island effect. However,
given that KSTL is 20 km to the northwest of downtown, the urban heat island
effect isn’t as strong as at some other stations in the middle of more
urbanized development. As such, there could still be brief dips slightly below
model guidance tonight. The sunshine will lead to slightly higher than modeled high
temperature, like the first 2 days. HRRR and NAM 3-km appear to show an unrealistically shallow mixed boundary layer tomorrow afternoon for a sunny day (not extending above 925 hPa). Even with the sunshine, the surface high pressure and lack of wind aloft means that winds will still be very light.
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| Source: PivotalWeather |