Risk for hail, damaging winds, tornadoes in northern Illinois Thursday: NWS

SYCAMORE – The National Weather Service is monitoring the potential for severe weather across northern Illinois Thursday that could bring with it destructive hail, damaging winds and tornadoes.

DuPage, DeKalb, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, La Salle, Lee, McHenry and Will counties could all be in the crosshairs of scattered but potentially severe storms, though forecasters said little storm development is still a plausible outcome.

David King, meteorologist with the Chicago NWS office, said the predicted scattered nature of the potentially severe weather means some areas of northern Illinois could go storm-less on Thursday while others bear the brunt of volatile atmospheric conditions.

“If that storm were to go and it would develop, I think that the environment would be favorable enough that it could grow, upscale and could be severe,” King said. “It’s enough that people should be paying attention to the weather on Thursday.”

The majority of the Shaw Local News Network coverage area is under a slight risk for severe weather on Thursday, according to the NWS Storm Prediction Center’s Day 3 Severe Thunderstorm Outlook. That means severe weather has a 15% chance of happening within 25 miles of any location listed under that designation.

Northern Illinois could also experience “hot, near record high” temperatures on Thursday, according to an Area Forecast Discussion posted by the the NWS Chicago branch based in Romeoville.

Temperatures in the area are expected to climb to almost 80 degrees by Wednesday. They could reach almost 90 degrees Thursday.

King said meteorologists have not yet determined when the storms could roll through, but have so far narrowed it to the latter half of Thursday.

“The timing right now is probably a little fluid, we’re still kind of working on that, but it was looking more like an afternoon, maybe an early evening kind of threat,” King said.

King said a handful of factors could stymie severe weather development, however. That includes the position of the low pressure system predicted to be to the northwest.

“However, if this actually does develop, because there should be enough low level moisture, and if that gets lifted up, we could actually have some scattered thunderstorms that do develop kind of along the line of the front,” King said.

Still two full days ahead of the predicted weather event, King said he was hesitant to forecast the size of hail that could be produced on Thursday. He nevertheless expects hail to be a threat.

“With the environment that we’re forecasting right now, I would say that the idea of having some type of hail that could cause damage is probable should a storm actually develop,” King said.