Wednesday will warm up but will also have a hint of wildfire smoke before later-day thunderstorms and smoke drift east. Of the next three days, today is the driest for the area.

For metro areas, here is a look at hourly rain chances:

You can see the rapid rise in chances return tomorrow and especially Friday. Overall, the chances for thunderstorms are higher in the north-central mountains to the edge of the metro areas.

Brief, but heavy, rain and gusty winds up to 40 to 50 mph can be expected.

Here's a walkthrough of storm locations and timing.

Clearly not an intense day of storms as we have seen, or will see before the week is over. Today will be a very dangerous day for the South, though.

More than 6 million people live in an area where significant severe thunderstorms capable of producing all severe hazards including large hail, intense wind gusts/damage, and tornadoes on Wednesday.

LOCATIONS...
Southern and Central Alabama
Southern and Central Mississippi
Southern and Central Georgia
Northern Louisiana
Southern Arkansas

HAZARDS...
Widespread damaging winds, some hurricane force
A few intense tornadoes
Scattered large hail, some baseball size
2-4 inches of rain also possible leading to flash flooding for these areas.

Our local storm pattern is far less severe, but we will see additional chances for flooding. The rainy pattern is good in terms of Canada's wildfire smoke - it will help keep the smoke at bay for the most part. Speaking of which, smoke from this morning will be pushing east throughout the afternoon and evening. This animation will show you that timeline.

I mentioned that today will be warmer in the headline, so let's look at that. Here is a look at temperatures for the week - responding to the increase chances of storms Thursday and Friday.

Warm weather fans drawn to those 85s... did you know that Denver has only hit 85° twice this year, and that was back on April 11th and 12th. Denver's hottest temperature this summer so far is only 79°!

If you'd like to be getting the "heads up, hey there is a forecast to be aware of" style emails from us, you can sign up for those for free by clicking here.