Even though our morning rain and cloud cover slowed down our warm up today, afternoon sunshine will recharge the atmosphere for another round of scattered showers and thunderstorms.

It appears the highest instability will be in central Indiana with the best chance and the strongest storms near Indy, but there is still a chance a few severe storms may clip the WANE viewing area.

The area of concern is highlighted in yellow on the severe risk map with the main concern being damaging winds up to 70 mph and hail up to 1.5″ in diameter.   Look for the storms as early as the early evening and into the early morning hours, but storms should exit the area after 3AM Friday.

Despite a good amount of rain in the last 24 hours, that rainfall did not take a huge bite out of the drought.  The new Drought Monitor now has the severe drought level expanding across the WANE viewing area.  It would take about ten more rounds of rain, like what we saw Thursday morning, to significantly reduce the drought to minimal levels.

The newest drought outlook for our area is for the drought to persist through the end of at least October.