Who knew Izzi could write this much about smoke, lol .UPDATE... Issued at 919 PM CDT Wed Jul 15 2026 Main forecast concern this evening continues to be the near- surface smoke potential over the next 24-36 hours. Lake enhanced front continues to make fairly quick (around 12kt) progress southward across the northern suburbs. Nocturnally, this boundary should lose some of momentum as the land-lake heating differential decreases nocturnally. Temps have been dropping into the upper 70s behind the front, so the front should provide some relief from the still toasty mid- evening temperatures for the northern suburbs into at least portions of the city. Dewpoints behind the front are in the 70s, so it will remain warm and muggy even in the wake of the boundary. Somewhat complex low level wind regime over the area due to a big kink in the front from Lake Michigan`s influences, plus lack of satellite data due to issues with GOES-E and no visibility observations over the lake all lead to a low confidence forecast with regards to near-surface smoke density and resultant visibility. Already starting to see some smoke driven MVFR visibilities into SE WI behind this lake enhanced front and most recently down to 5SM at UGN. Interestingly, if anything, the HRRR smoke model was generally too high with visibilities over MI and especially WI today. The leading edge of the smoke is also moving more quickly southwestward off the lake, though the speed with which it is outpacing the model should ease some tonight as that boundary slows and potentially washes out. Given the above noted trends, have sped up time of arrival of the smoke in the grids tonight into northeast and far northern IL. Visibilities over SE WI have generally been in the 3-5SM range with the smoke this evening. Backward trajectories suggest that the air over far northern IL and the Chicago area tomorrow morning into the early afternoon will have originated over the waters of southern Lake Michigan this evening. Given the complete lack of any data from over Lake Michigan, it`s hard to have a great deal of confidence in how dense the near-surface smoke will be and how low visibilities will drop Thursday morning. Recently Muskegon, MI has seen VSBY drop below 2SM, so certainly possible that there is some denser smoke over the lake, especially given the HRRR`s apparent high bias in VSBY today. Ultimately, the message of smoke in the forecast tomorrow is unchanged from earlier forecasts as it seems to be right on track. The bigger uncertainty at this time appears to be how far south and southwest the smoke will get into our CWA and just how low visibilities will get. If smoke ends up denser, this could have a several degree impact on temperatures Thursday, but given the low confidence in the thickness of the smoke tomorrow, made no changes to the going high temp forecast for tomorrow. Updated grids and derived text products have been sent already. - Izzi

It didn't give me consent

Did you kiss it?

Raining here, but barely