What is an MCS/MCC?

As you’ve woken up yesterday, today, and tomorrow, you might have noticed the same story, a line of storms came through our area overnight, and there are showers remaining for the commute. These systems have a term in meteorology, an MCS, a mesoscale convective system. Mesoscale means middle size, a lot of what we deal with it here in Michiana. The jet stream is bigger than mesoscale, a pop-up shower by itself is smaller than mesoscale. There are multiple types of MCS’s, including lake effect snow, but also what we are seeing. What these are most similar to are MCCS convective complexes, but they are usually much larger, in size and duration.

When we had storms roll through Saturday morning, we saw a defined line and then scattered showers. It didn’t have too much severe weather, but we did have strong gusts causing some tree damage in Niles. This morning, we had stronger storms, slightly harder gusts, and more lightning. Neither of these were MCCs, they don’t have the width, but both an MCS to be sure. Tomorrow also doesn’t look like it will meet the width criteria and could become a squall line, bringing strong wind and heavy rainfall. Flooding could be an issue tomorrow morning.