Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This study investigates severe weather events occurring in the Midwest, Central, and Northeastern United States from May through September 2004. Severe weather events are pinpointed using tornado and hail reports and correlating them with NEXRAD radar data to determine maximum intensity of the event. Severe storms that occur within 30 minutes of a model forecast hour are catalogued for further investigation. Once these events are diagnosed, ETA-212 and MM5 model data is regridded, centered on the storm. Divergence values at 300 hPa are extracted from the model data for each storm event. These storms are then grouped in three ways: all storms, tornadic storms, and hail producing storms. The averaged maximum divergence values from the ETA-212 for each group are examined from the 0 hour analysis through the 21 hour forecast. From these averaged divergence values, a matrix of recommended divergence threshold values is derived. For the MM5 data, a subset of storms is examined. The MM5 and ETA-212 are run on an identical set of storms, and the divergence forecasts are compared. / Captain, United States Air Force