Previewing Friday night's possible severe weather across Chicagoland

Spotty showers linger Thursday before warmup, storm threat Friday

Mike Caplan has your Chicago weather update!

CHICAGO - The Chicago area has had several rounds of heavy rain and severe thunderstorms this week, and there's another coming our way at the end of the week.

A strong cold front is expected to move through Chicagoland Friday night, likely bringing heavy rain and the chance of severe storms to the area.

The Storm Prediction Center has our area in a level 2 Slight Risk for late Friday afternoon into Friday night. The latest severe weather outlook shows the highest threat of severe storms near and west of I-39 in a level 3 Enhanced Risk.

The primary concern with any storms that become severe will be damaging wind gusts, but we'll also need to watch for large hail and a few isolated tornadoes. The overall tornado threat appears highest west of Chicagoland, but our region is still highlighted in a 2-5% risk.

As for timing, a few isolated or scattered storms may fire up as early as 4 or 5 PM, but the main show will likely arrive near or after sunset. Futurecast shows heavy rain and strong to severe storms moving over the I-39 corridor around 7 or 8 PM.

The line of storms will then move from west to east across the Chicago area through the late evening hours. As for the Chicago metro, current forecasts show the line of storms charging through by 9 PM.

As the storms march east through Northwest Indiana, we'll likely start to see a weakening trend due to loss of daytime heating. While there will still be a chance for strong to severe storms in Northwest Indiana, the overall severe weather threat should diminish after midnight.

Make sure you have ways to receive severe weather alerts Friday and Friday night, and know your plan in case a Tornado Warning is issued for your location.

What's next:

Following our Friday night storms, conditions will turn much cooler for the weekend ahead. Showers will taper off early Saturday and we should break into sunshine through the day with daytime highs in the 50s.