Alan Crone's Weather Blog: Warm With Storms Later In The Day

We’re tracking another storm complex this morning across part of southern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas.   This system should drive southeast across part of Arkansas, but a few small showers or storms will remain possible this morning across eastern OK.  This chance remains very low.   Our attention will quickly turn to the short-wave diving down the central plains this morning and a weak surface boundary stretched across part of Kansas.   These two features will combine with abundant low level moisture to produce scattered thunderstorms later today and tonight.   Some of the storms will more than likely be strong with a few severe storms possible.   Our main threats, other than pockets of moderate to heavy rainfall, will be hail and damaging wind gusts.   We’re keeping a rather robust probability in the forecast (60%) for this system, but a few locations may miss-out on the storm activity.   Temperatures this morning are very warm and mainly in the upper 70s and lower 80s.   Daytime highs will move back into the lower or mid-90s today with southwest winds before the boundary nears the area this afternoon and evening.

The timing of initial storm development this afternoon will be somewhere in the 3pm to 6pm period as the boundary sags into northern OK and the influence of the short-wave nears the state.   The early stages of the event should support super-cellular type storms.   As the evening progresses, the storms should attempt to develop a line or squall-line of storm activity.   If storms do form a line or a segment of storms, the trend will be for increasing wind damage potential as the system moves southeast into the east-central or southern sections of the state.   This would occur between 8pm and 2am Friday.   The boundary may not move too far south from the Thursday afternoon position.   This means some additional storm activity may occur pre-dawn Friday near northern OK and could fester in the morning hours, but the higher chances Friday morning may still reside across southern OK with the decaying areas of showers and storms.

This surface boundary and its eventual positioning Friday into Saturday will provide a focus for additional thunderstorm activity Friday night and Saturday.   The upper air flow will remain from the northwest to southeast.   A few small disturbances will be likely to move across the region and storm chances will remain in the forecast.   Unfortunately, this pattern will remain for Saturday, the 4^th, with additional storm chances early in the morning and later in the afternoon and evening hours.    Another disturbance may arrive Sunday with additional storm chances across the eastern third of the state.

Monday the surface boundary should be lifting northward and a mid-level ridge will briefly expand across part, but not all of the state.   This means most locations will warm-up and dry-out early next week with highs back in the lower 90s.   Data suggest the boundary will remain near or close enough to the northern OK state line for storms to develop Tuesday and Wednesday near or north of these features.   We’re more than likely going to see some thunderstorm activity along the far northern OK locations for the middle of next week.

Thanks for reading the Thursday morning weather discussion and blog.

Remain aware of your weather surroundings today and tonight as possible storms develop or move into your region.

Have a safe afternoon.

Alan Crone

KOTV