Ahhhh yes, it's finally feeling like summer around the area, and that means typical afternoon and early evening pop-up showers and storms. Tonight on 40/29 news at 5 we'll show you the typical life cycle of summer storms. Ted Zarras will explain that in our double team report during weather.

In the blog post below, I talked about how the mountainous terrain helps to produce thunderstorms, and that scenario looks to be the same for today; however, looking at an upper air sounding, I also noticed that we have some dry air aloft, and that could mean strong gusty winds within the storms.

Take a look at this morning's sounding from Little Rock (LZK). Notice how the dewpoint temperature rapidly decreases from about 600 mb to 450 mb. This dry air has a tendency to create evaporational cooling within the thunderstorms. The rapidly cooled air drops quickly and falls toward the surface as a microburst type of wind. The hotter the temperatures at the surface, the faster the air will fall.

It's also interesting to note that the dry air also can help with hail production. The freezing level today is around 579 mb. When you take in account the dry air, your wet bulb temperature drops to 683 mb. In essence, the dry air drops the freezing level, making it easier for hail to grow.