Short Range Forecast Discussion NWS Weather Prediction Center College Park MD 437 AM EDT Thu Jun 05 2014 Valid 12Z Thu Jun 05 2014 - 12Z Sat Jun 07 2014 ...The atmosphere will remain ripe for heavy rains and severe thunderstorms along a frontal boundary stretched from the Central Plains to the Southeast... A frontal boundary stretched from the Central Plains to the Carolina coast will serve as a focal point for showers and thunderstorms over the next few days. Energy streaking eastward from the Central Rockies will help ignite convection along the front...and developing storms will have a good chance of becoming organized as they propagate into a moist and unstable airmass in place to the south of the boundary. Flash flooding and severe weather will be a threat for locations along and just south of the front...impacting the Central Plains...Middle Mississippi Valley...and Tennessee Valley. Showers and thunderstorms will continue to light up beneath an upper trough swinging into Minnesota on Thursday and into the Upper Great Lakes by Friday morning. Behind this feature...an anomalously strong cold front will begin to make a southward plunge out of western Canada. Not much precipitation is expected with the front as it dips through the Northwest...but as the boundary pushes farther south and east...rain and thunderstorms should develop east of the Northern Rockies and spread eastward across the Northern Plains on Friday. Unsettled weather is expected across the Northeast late this week as a deepening surface low tracking through the northern Mid-Atlantic states pushes offshore and starts tracking up the New England coastline. Atlantic moisture wrapping around the low will bring steady rains to locations along the coast...but the low and associated precipitation should lift into the Canadian Maritimes by early Saturday. Gerhardt Graphics available at www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/basicwx/basicwx_wbg.php