After our very long dry spell with no real chance of any rainfall, we do bring in at least a chance of showers and thunderstorms the next couple of days. A strong ridge of high pressure will give us the heat necessary to combine with a very weak impulse dropping down out of the north to allow clouds to build up in the afternoon and those have about a 20% chance of producing showers at any one place here in the Truckee Meadows. The chances improve somewhat on Thursday before things dry out and clear out as we go into the weekend. High temperatures will climb to the upper 90s and fall back only slightly into the mid-90s over the weekend.

Steve writes in to ask: “What is the difference in the “ingredients” that go into the thunderstorm “brew” that ends up producing a storm full of cloud-to-ground bolts vs. a storm producing cloud-to-cloud bolts?”

The ingredients are really the same. In fact, most storms that have cloud to ground strikes will also have a lot of cloud to cloud strikes as well. I’ll elaborate more on this tomorrow.