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Northwest Indiana Weather, Lake Station, IN (2024)

06/27/2024

Good afternoon, Region Rats! How are we all enjoying the wonderfully cool temperatures today?

I meant to do another forecast the other day and just completely spaced it off. I've also decided to do a 7 day forecast instead of 10-14, as the forecast models will become increasingly inaccurate and anything longer than 7 days can be INCREDIBLY inaccurate. I'll be setting myself a reminder once a week to publish another forecast, however I still might be late by a day or two depending upon life at the time.

Let's get started!

This week is going to bring us some variability in temperatures - they're going to yo-yo a bit, but honestly I prefer that to consistently sweltering temps to be sure.

Tomorrow we'll see cloudy skies and a high around 81, with rain on its way again in the overnight hours.

Saturday around midnight we'll that rain beginning to roll in with some scattered showers before the rain becomes more widespread around 1-2, and thunderstorms expected to start around 2-3 AM. These will not be severe storms. The rain and majority of the clouds will start moving out by early afternoon, and the rest of the day will range from partly cloudy to sunny with a high around 84, although heat indices will be hitting the upper 80s to low 90s thanks to the humidity.

Sunday will be another blissfully cool day with highs in the mid 60s and partly to mostly cloudy skies in the morning and early afternoon, and sunny skies arriving by mid afternoon. It will be pretty breezy with north winds blowing around 10-20mph, but that sounds like a great day for some yard work to this gal! Nothing like a cool breeze when you're getting your sweat on, haha.

Monday brings us a sunny morning and early afternoon, with mostly sunny to partly cloudy skies arriving by mid afternoon and remaining throughout the evening and night and a high in the mid to upper 70s.

Tuesday will see cloudy skies in the morning and some spotty showers in the early afternoon before the clouds start to give way a little to give us a mostly to partly cloudy afternoon and evening. A few showers and scattered thunderstorms are expected to arrive around 9-10 PM that will linger through the overnight hours.

In the wee hours and early morning Wednesday, the storms will shift from scattered to more widespread starting at about 3-4 AM and persisting until about 6-7 AM, when they once again become scattered and then isolated before the weather clears around 8-9 AM. The rest of the day will be mostly cloudy - and there will be an off-chance for the occasional isolated storm in the afternoon. The high will be in the upper 80s with heat indices in the low 90s.

Thursday's wee hours will see more spotty showers that will move out of the area by mid morning, though skies will remain cloudy with potential for some spotty showers throughout the day. By 6-7 PM, the showers will be more widespread and will persist until the late morning or early afternoon on Friday.

I hope you all have a great week, and I'll do my best to give you your next forecast on Friday - Saturday at the latest!

06/17/2024

I've wanted to post an infographic on recognizing the symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke as I try to any time it's going to be excessively hot. Do your best to stay cool and hydrated if you're going to be outside during this heat wave and the summer as a whole!

I've decided not to delete this post as I often do with old posts on this page, and will be leaving it up throughout the summer. It's incredibly important for people to be able to recognize both heat exhaustion and heat stroke, not just in themselves but in others.

(As a note, a throbbing headache is common with heat exhaustion as well - I've had it a couple of times over the years, it's not fun. I would call it a mild-to-moderate headache, whereas the headache with heat stroke will be more severe.)

05/26/2024

I know I'm several days late on doing this, my apologies for that!

It's time to finally judge our spring photo contest!

In first place for our cover photo is Pamela Bailey with her lovely lilacs!

Kat Seiber comes in a very close second with her beautiful tulips, and I'd like to give an honorable mention to Zoe Ann with that gorgeous sunset!

Nothing says 'spring' to me like lilacs and tulips!

For our profile photo contest, Jane Schneegas-Turbin comes in first with a great shot of a turkey vulture catching the thermals ahead of an oncoming storm!

Juny PuertoRico comes in second with his beautiful crabapple blossoms, and I'd like to give an honorable mention to Jeanette Cole Rhinefield for her beautiful bluebird!

I have to tell ya, it wasn't easy to choose which photos to use; you all had some GREAT pictures and I truly enjoyed seeing every single one of them!

Our summer photo contest is going to be sometime in mid July, and I'm looking forward to seeing what y'all come up with for that!

05/06/2024

I wanted to share two *fantastic* shots of the strong storm on Saturday, along with some general weather knowledge - y'all know how much I love sharing what I know about the weather with you!

The first picture was taken by Gavin Graves in Portage, and the second is from official weather spotter Kat Seiber in Lowell. The third picture is one I've snagged off of Google to give you a good reference for the information I'm sharing today, where I talk about the differences between wall and shelf clouds, as well as the differences between SCUD clouds and funnel clouds! Visual aids are always good things, I think!

What you're looking at is an absolutely beautiful shelf cloud formation. Shelf clouds form when the downdrafts in a strong-to-severe storm brings down air that's cooler than the rest of the storm, which then displaces the warm air out ahead of the storm, lifting the warmer air up which causes it to condense at the boundary of cool and warm air. These usually indicate a solid line of storms rather than a broken line, with winds striking ahead of the storm and then the shelf cloud will typically bring very heavy rain and sometimes hail from that warm air rising and cooling over and over until it forms ice.

Shelf clouds may also appear to rotate horizontally, which can sometimes cause weak and very short lived QLCS/Squall Line tornadoes.

It's important to note that shelf clouds are very different animals from wall clouds, although some can mistake the shelves for walls.

When rotation occurs with wall clouds, they will always rotate vertically, and will be smaller and more compact than shelves, whereas shelf clouds will be very wide and look a lot like the motherships breaking through the atmosphere in Independence Day (it's what I always think of LOL!)

Wall clouds are always the result of supercell storms, and these clouds will often have a solid and very tall anvil shape at their top from the extreme updrafts in the storm (these anvil-shaped clouds are called cumulonimbus clouds, and are considered the 'king of clouds!')

A common misconception with wall clouds as well is that they always produce tornadoes; but less than half of them do! However ALL wall clouds indicate a supercell storm and particularly dangerous severe weather.

Wall clouds will usually have what's commonly known as a tail cloud, properly called a flumen - you can see it on the left side of the image of the wall cloud. These are often mistaken for funnels as they can be quite long and funnel-like in appearance, however these tails are typically hanging horizontally off of the wall cloud and are caused by warm air and moisture flowing into the wall cloud. Tail clouds don't rotate, however the presence of a tail cloud is indicative of tornadic risk.

There's also another trickster that's often mistaken for a funnel cloud that's commonly seen with wall clouds known as SCUD clouds (the name itself is an acronym: Scattered Cumulus Under Deck.) SCUD clouds can strongly resemble a funnel as they can extend in a funnel shape down toward the ground. Unlike funnels, however, these clouds can look wispy and will often be broken up, and will almost always have jagged edges. SCUD clouds will NOT rotate.

SCUD clouds also often detach from the bottom of the storm cloud itself, which funnels never will. SCUD clouds are actually harmless and do not cause severe weather, although they are often found with severe storms. However, this isn't always true - any storm can produce SCUD clouds, and they can also be seen with shelf clouds, not just wall clouds!

Funnel clouds are much more solid and condensed, and are almost always smooth edged as the funnel begins to descend. They will always be rotating, and this rotation will be visible at close range (in which case, run) or at a distance if you've got good eyes, or zoom in a camera or utilize a pair of binoculars. ALWAYS seek shelter in the presence of a funnel cloud. It may not head your way, but the debris from tornadoes can scatter for miles, and it's always better to have yourself under cover in case any of it flies your way.

If that funnel IS headed your way and you don't have a basement or storm cellar to shelter in, go to the most interior room in your house; if this happens to be a bathroom, hunker down in the bathtub! I also recommend sheltering under some sort of solid object wherever you seek shelter, but if this isn't possible, then cover yourself with a blanket to help protect against cuts and glancing blows from objects, and keep your arms wrapped around and over your head as best you can to protect against solid objects. Better to have fractured arms than fractured skulls!

I hope this post was really informative for you all, and thanks again to Gavin and Kat for these great snapshots of that beautiful shelf!

02/28/2024

(Shared on this page on 2/28/24) About the time this was happening I was trying to figure out if I was hearing a tornado or just constant thunder. Now I know. Hope everyone in its path came through it alright

08/23/2023

To attempt to get around the algorithm tanking how many of you have been able to see my posts, I'm going to start making stories with links to the posts in question.

I've finally found some methods that a lot of users are reporting to have really helped this issue.

1) Click on/tap the ... on this page on the right hand side below the page's cover photo and hit 'following.'

2) Set this as a favorite page to increase chances of the posts being on your feed.

3) For additional help seeing my posts, while in the 'following' section, click 'content' under the notifications settings

4) Select 'standard' instead of 'highlights' to get notified when I make a post (up to five notifications a day.)

I hope this helps you all, I know many of you have been very frustrated with not seeing my posts on your feeds.

04/25/2023

~ Public Service Announcement ~

If you're a new arrival and this page seems a bit bare, I delete posts that are of expired weather alerts or commentary on weather events that are no longer active; it was brought to my attention by a few people that they kept seeing old posts on their feed instead of new ones - deleting the posts circumvents this issue and helps ensure you will see up-to-date weather information and storm watches/warnings as they occur.

08/07/2022

Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued for Southern Porter County and Northern Jasper County until 2 PM CDT

Hazards: 60mph wind gusts and torrential rain

08/07/2022

Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued for Southern Lake County and Northern Newton County until 1:15 PM CDT

Hazards: 60mph wind gusts and torrential rain

08/07/2022

A Flood Advisory is in effect for Lake County until 1:30 PM

Minor flooding in low-lying areas with poor drainage is expected, as are quick rises in streams, rivers, and irrigation ditches.

08/03/2022

All Severe Thunderstorm watches and warnings have now been canceled or have expired; we're through with severe weather for the day - we'll still possibly get more rain and thunderstorms this late this evening and overnight, as well as tomorrow, but no more severe weather is expected.

Our heat advisory has also been canceled thanks to the plummeting temperatures that the storms brought.

08/03/2022

Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued for Northern Newton County, Southern Porter County, Jasper County until 4:15 PM CDT

Hazards: 60 mph wind gusts, torrential rain, hail

08/03/2022

How about that cool off with those storms! We went from 90 with a 105 heat index here in Lake Station to 79!

08/03/2022

Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued for Southern Lake County and Newton County until 3:30 PM

Hazards: Torrential rain, damaging wind gusts and hail

08/03/2022

Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued for La Porte and Porter counties until 3 PM

Hazards: Hail, torrential rain and 60 mph wind gusts

08/03/2022

Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued for Lake County until 3 PM

Hazards: 60mph wind gusts and quarter sized hail.

Large amounts of rain can also be expected with these slow-moving storms.

08/03/2022

A Severe Thunderstorm Watch has been issued for the counties of Lake, Porter, Benton, Jasper and Newton until 8 PM Central Time.

Conditions are currently extremely favorable for the development of severe thunderstorms - most likely many if not most of these will be pop-up storms; random sudden developments due to atmospheric instability. Keep your phones close in case of the issuance of warnings. The greatest threat with severe storms today will be wind and hail, but an isolated tornado cannot be ruled out.

08/02/2022

A Heat Advisory is in effect from 10 AM until 8 PM Central tomorrow, with heat indexes in the 100s expected.

07/28/2022

We have another brief heatwave coming next week with the temperatures forecast to be hottest on the 3rd and 4th. Heat index values are too far out to predict, but base Temps will be in the mid to upper 90s, possibly hitting triple digits.

07/27/2022

Special Weather Statement issued for Northern Porter County until 4:45 PM

A strong thunderstorm will impact portions of northern Porter County.

Hazards: Wind gusts up to 50 mph, penny size hail and torrential rainfall.

07/27/2022

(CANCELED) Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued for northern Lake County until 4:45 PM

Hazards: 60mph wind gusts and quarter sized hail, along with torrential rain