What's An MCS or MCC?

A Mesoscale Convective System or Mesoscale Convective Complex is simply a big glob of storms! Kind of. During the summer months, storms fire along some sort of trigger in the heat of the afternoon and then are steered over long distances through the upper-level winds. Typically, it starts as a few strong storms and then spreads out into large blob of rain and thunderstorms. These are typically where we get our "million $$$ rains" for farmers in the summer. Whenever I see a pattern change that draws a NW flow in the summer, I start getting more optimistic about a million dollar rain.

Not much rain today! Here's the upper-level pattern right now. If you notice, the upper level ridge is ruling us and surrounding areas.

Over the next couple of days this ridge will break down and little and we should see a few pop-up storms. It's not a huge chance of rain, but a 10-20% chance of a pop-up storm. You can see the ridge breaking down a little here on Thursday:

Next week is when I think we "may" see a MCC/MCS move through. Notice that the ridge is south of us or at least we are on the NW side of the ridge. The lines tend to show the movement of the upper-level winds and notice the NW flow that is trying to set up. We're right on the edge and I might be wishcasting a little, but we may get some rain in Region 8 with this pattern:

It may happen... There's a chance, but it is not guaranteed. We do have a 30-40% chance of rain Sun-Mon and even that may be pushing it. We'll see.

Stay cool everyone!
Ryan