Weather Alert Day criteria for severe storms heading into Wednesday

We’ve seen nothing but sunshine the last several days and temperatures into the 50s and 60s. But heading off into Wednesday morning. That's going to be changing as ABC 17 Stormtrack weather team has issued a weather alert date in effect until Wednesday afternoon.

Conditions will continuously switch from winter storms back towards severe spring storms as we head toward the month of March. Severe storms will become more prevalent meaning the need for alerting the public upon dangerous conditions will increase. In order for a Weather Alert Day to be issued, one of various criteria listed above must be predicted happen. For Wednesday the 21st, a Weather Alert Day has been issued for the possibility of damaging winds and heavy rainfall.

The main driving force behind the approaching storms will be a large increase in the wind shear. Wind shear is the changing of speed and direction of winds when increasing the altitude. This gives the atmosphere turbulent motions driving storm development.

Another ingredient in storm development is CAPE. CAPE, is an acronym standing for Convective Available Potential Energy. This is the amount of energy the environment has to use to create and continue storm development. Wednesday will see trace amounts of CAPE, but the impressive amount of shear can make up for this.